^ 




^SrS.ScS.^'f 



THE BAD RESULTS g 
OF GOOD HABITS ^ 
AND OTHER LAPSES ft 



>AA* 



J. Edgar Park 



^^^«;^Ks^^-?^=s«r2'>^¥'^ 




Classens 3 g 3 I _ 

CSBfRIGHT DEFDSm 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 
AND OTHER LAPSES 



THE BAD RESULTS 
OF GOOD HABITS 
AND OTHER LAPSES 

By J. EDGAR PARK 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

The Riverside Press Cambridge 
1920 



COPYRXGHT, 1915, 1917, AND I920, BY J. EDGAR PARK 
ALL RIGHTS RESBRVBD 



Ah{ 1 9 \^2\} 



ISO 



©CU566590 



CONTENTS 



4 /. 



*- 



The Bad Results of Good Habits 1 

The Disadvantages of Being Good 46 

How TO Control Your Future 54 

The Folly of Getting There 62 
The Revision of the Ten Command- 

^ MENTS 75 

/ Why Ministers Play Golf 83 

Some Inexpensive Household Luxuries 93 

'/ Unorthodox Interpretations 103 

The Happiness of Being Grown Up 115 
The World, the Flesh, and the Devil 121 
Two Kinds of Christmas 132 

Our Hereditary Scare 141 

Literature and Democracy 145 

The Great Joy of Getting Home Again 157 
What I Would Not That I Do 164 

Lies 167 

The Best Joke 175 

This is as Far as You Go 181 

In Praise of Eve 183 

The Grammar of Life 188 

Three Familiar Devils 191 

V 



CONTENTS 

A Trip around My Soul 198 

Life 's a Jest 202 

Lapses from the Prosaic 218 

The Secret of the Moral Training of 
Children 222 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 
AND OTHER LAPSES 



THE BAD RESULTS OF 
GOOD HABITS 

IT is a curious fact that I have never 
felt quite at home with good people. 
I should have been a foreign mission- 
ary, for I have so much in common 
with the heathen. 

But I know that I speak to a small 
band of kindred spirits when I say that 
there has always seemed to me to be 
an unnatural and strained atmosphere 
among the gatherings of professedly 
good people. In order to be convinced 
of this fact, one has only to visit a la- 
dies' sewing circle at any church. 

I knew a Scotch boy once who had 
to walk two miles to church, attend 
Sunday School beginning at a quarter 
3 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

past ten o'clock, stay for church which 
began at a quarter past eleven, getting 
back home about two o'clock, say the 
Westminster Shorter Catechism to his 
mother all afternoon, or read Sunday- 
School books with their moral skele- 
tons indecently exposed, start for eve- 
ning service at twenty past sk, and 
remain for the prayer meeting which 
was held afterwards at which certain 
interminable interviews were held with 
the Deity for the benefit of the youth- 
ful humanity who were present. When 
he was taught that heaven was to be 
such a place "where congregations 
ne'er disperse and Sabbaths have no 
end," he sidled up to his teacher and 
said, "Ah, teacher, if I'm vera gude 
there a' the week, will I no' get doon 
to play wi' the wee deelies on the Set- 
turdays?" 

4 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

"I am tired of lifelong habits — those dis- 
guises — 

Tm tired of learning to be good; 
I would go and fling discretion far forever 

In the heart of a great wild wood. 

**I would like to live my days hke a wild, wild 
bird 
Where the primroses lie dew-pearled, 
And to leave far behind my little, stiff good 
works 
For the wicked enchanting world. 

"Hark I There is the Church belli My relations 

downstairs in a row 
Boots nicely polished, are waiting — Let them 
waiti . . . 
And yet I know 

**ril take my prayer-book and demurely sit 

as I always do 
None knowing how wicked I am — so quiet 

in the high-backed pew . . ." 

Marjorie Wilson 

The heart of the particular side of 
human nature which I have to bring 
before you is this: That respectable vir- 
5 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

tues are terribly apt to breed uninteresting 
vices. 

There are two kinds of goodness. 
There is what for want of a better term 
I must call Respectable Goodness, and 
there is Adventurous Goodness. 

There is Respectable Goodness, 
standing with its long robes in the cor- 
ner of the street, presumably praying; 
there is Adventurous Goodness, with 
a whip of small cords driving the whole 
Holy Fair out of the Temple. The first 
may be all right, but it is uninteresting. 
The second is marvelously interesting. 

There is Respectable Goodness in 
some eighteenth-century Church of 
England divine standing in his cathe- 
dral droning over the everlasting serv- 
ice to the same verger. There is Adven- 
turous Goodness in John Wesley riding 
and preaching in the unheard-of open 
6 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

air, without gown or bands, to tens of 
thousands of common folk throughout 
the whole length and breadth of Eng- 
land. 

There is Respectable Goodness in 
the good Scotch elder or New England 
Deacon who assigned his wife and chil- 
dren their Sunday afternoon tasks and 
then slumbered in orthodox fashion in 
his ancestral armchair. There is Ad- 
venturous Goodness in the boy who 
sneaked out and ran into the woods and 
learned the notes of the birds, made 
friends with the flowers of the field. 

And to-day there is a lot of respecta- 
ble goodness in our churches. There is 
a kind of suburban soap that won't 
wash slums, and the httle girl's report 
of the text that was not far wrong: 
"Many are cold, but few are frozen." 
There, too, you can see whole congre- 
7 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

gations in the attitude of worship pre- 
sumably praying. There, too, you can 
hear whole congregations singing words 
of the loftiest piety and aspiration. 
And outside the church there is to-day 
lots of adventurous goodness in unor- 
thodox and almost disreputable places. 
Sometimes we all understand what the 
Englishman meant when he said: 
"You never saw a Christian in church, 
or a lady in a first-class carriage." 

Roman Catholic critics may say that 
Protestantism is the worship of mate^ 
rial success; that in spite of all high 
sounding phrases the supreme end of 
Protestantism is to raise people to a 
certain level of material well-being. A 
steady, industrious life is its end. It 
has not much use for contemplation, 
devotion, art, or any of the interests 
that may fill the higher spaces of the 
8 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

soul. It produces a prosperous, respect- 
able, somewhat uninteresting life. Per- 
haps Romanism has less class spirit 
and more real reUgious devotion in its 
churches, because it does not worship 
respectability so much as Protestant- 
ism does. 

I believe the lesson which the Ro- 
man Church has to teach the Protest- 
ants is this: " There is more in life than 
the moral of it; there is the mystery of 
it, and there is the beauty of it." Prot- 
estantism has been founded upon the 
idea that this universe was estabUshed 
solely and simply as a school of moral 
discipline for human beings; that all 
there was of life was the moral of it. 
The sermon is the thing. All else is the 
preliminary service. Now it is a pecul- 
iar fact that morals are always emi- 
nently respectable, but deadly uninter- 
9 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

esting. A church or a church service 
that is founded upon the theory that 
God is interested in conduct and in 
nothing else will be dull. 

"The Reformation," says one writer, 
"swept away the last shreds of Pagan 
purple, the last half-withered flowers 
of Pagan fancy, out of Christianity, 
and left it a whitewashed, utilitarian 
thing — a Methodist chapel, well-ven- 
tilated and well-warmed, but singu- 
larly like a railway station or a wash- 
house." 

Now the whole glory of Protestant- 
ism has been in its identification of 
the ethical with the religious. But the 
whole glory of Catholicism has been 
in its assertion that the religious is a 
wider circle than the ethical. 

Good habits have bad results as long 
as they are followed for their own sake. 

10 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

The results of good habits only be- 
come wholly good when those habits 
have forgotten themselves and lost 
themselves in personality. Moral prin- 
ciples are impotent to touch humanity 
till they are clothed in beauty and mys- 
tery. And the full union of beauty and 
mystery is personality. You believe, 
for instance, that early rising is a good 
habit you ought to adopt. You get up 
at five o'clock some morning. What is 
the result? The result is that you are 
so conceited all the morning, and so 
tired and bad-tempered all the after- 
noon and evening, that there is no liv- 
ing with you at all. It is a good habit, 
I admit; just think of the enormous 
number of worms of whose unnecessary 
presence it has cleared the earth. But 
the poor worm did not profit by it. See 
that you do. If you must get up early 
11 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

in the morning, let your early rising 
silently justify itself by its works. Wait 
till some one asks you how you man- 
age to get so much done in the day, be- 
fore you talk about it. The attractive 
virtue must always be in solution in 
life. 

Or think for a minute of Conscien- 
tiousness, that supreme glory of New 
England. Now conscientious people 
are generally hated. We fly from them 
and love to listen to the Child as she 
promises to lead us to ''The Land of 
the Heart's Desire": 

"Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, 
Where nobody gets old and godly and grave, 

Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue. 
And where kind tongues bring no captivity, 

For we are only true to the far lights. 
We follow singing over valley and hill." 

Conscientiousness, when followed for 

12 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

its own sake, produces a whole host 
of stuffy, uninteresting vices. 

We all know those hateful prim peo- 
ple who draw themselves up and purse 
their mouths together and say, "Well, 
I don't like saying it, but I feel it my 
duty to say," and then with a gesture 
of the hand seem to break the film of 
ice on the top of an invisible pail of 
water and throw it all over the project 
at issue and down the back of the neck 
of every one present. 

"Upon my word," said one poor 
man, weary with the perpetual preach- 
ing which he was always receiving 
from both pulpit and pew, in the old 
days evangehcal, in modern days, ethi- 
cal, — "Upon my word I don't know 
which is the greater plague, the old- 
fashioned nuisance called a soul, or the 
new-fangled bore called mankind." 
13 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

You know the moral aristocrat. His 
motto is ** All or nothing." He appears 
among temperance reformers often- 
times. He is generally so much under 
the influence of pie and doughnuts that 
he lumps together alcohol, smoking, 
and dancing as the devil incarnate. He 
is generally a she or a bunch of shes, 
who over their third cup of tea con- 
demn the soldier's cigarette. 

We meet the moral aristocrat among 
politicians. One of the most hopeful 
movements for reform in one of our 
large cities was lost a short while ago 
because the reform candidate was a 
moral aristocrat. He was conscientious 
for the sake of being conscientious, 
and not for the sake of reform. He re- 
fused in a pubhc manner even to shake 
hands with the other candidate. Part 
of us respects him for it, and yet it was 
14 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

but a type of the great tactical blun- 
ders which lost a campaign. 

The English statesman John Morley, 
after his experience as Governor of In- 
dia, recently said that one of the great- 
est hindrances to real reform in India 
was the impatient idealist who would 
not recognize the slow, practical steps 
which are necessary to bring any great 
reform about, but comes forward, say- 
ing: "Don't you admit that this is just 
and right? Why then don't you do it? 
If you don't do it immediately, then I 
shall have nothing more to do with 
you. I shall denounce you as a coward 
and a traitor." 

Worse still, as the result of conscien- 
tiousness, is the moral prig who is al- 
ways preaching. "Alice in Wonder- 
land," one of the wisest books in the 
English language, is a grand parody 
15 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

and skit upon the morally priggish 
ways we have of bringing up children. 
Alice cannot say anything but she is cor- 
rected and told that is not the right 
way to say it; she has the lesson pointed 
out about everything. "I see nobody 
in the road," said Alice. "I only wish 
I had such eyes," said the King in a 
reproving tone, "to be able to see No- 
body." 

"There is nothing like eating hay 
when you're faint," said the King. 

"I should think throwing cold water 
over you would be better," Alice sug- 
gested. 

" I did n't say there was nothing bet- 
ter," said the King, severely, "I said 
there was nothing like it." 

Most parents allow conscientious- 
ness to bear its bitter fruit in them and 
become moral prigs full of corrections 
16 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

and lessons, walking sermons. The 
great reason why Mark Twain was so 
tremendously popular with us all was 
that he never preached. He often pre- 
tended he was going to, and then de- 
lighted us all when at the last moment 
we expected, "And now, dear brethren, 
what is the lesson of this for us — "he 
burst out laughing. "When you get 
mad, count 100 — and then swear." 

"Be good, and you will be — very 
lonely." 

"When in doubt tell — the truth." 

Such are some of his excellent ways 
of charming us by not preaching and 
you can all remember scores of others. 

Conscientiousness followed for its 
own sake results also in the morbidly 
tender conscience. Some of our good 
friends will argue for a good hour 
as to whether their conscience allows 

17 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

them to begin a letter to a stranger 
with "Dear." Ought we to give prizes 
to children? is another favorite topic 
for discussion for these delicate souls. 
Every subject that comes before them 
has to be subjected to the delicious 
subdivisions of this conscience, till real, 
instant, heroic action becomes impos- 
sible — till they carry such cultivated 
consciences within them that like Pas- 
cal they begin to wonder if it is right 
for them to kiss their own sisters. As 
for any real adventurous, thrilling he- 
roic action, they are far too much in 
the condition of the mind of the centi- 
pede. 

"The centipede was happy quite, 
Until the toad, for fun, 
Asked him which leg came after which, 
Which worked his mind to such a pitch. 
He lay distracted in a ditch. 
Considering how to run." 

18 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

Oh, the stuffiness of so much reputed 
goodness! Oh, the machine-made, me- 
chanical goodness which is little but seK- 
ish obedience to laws and consciously 
formed prudential habits! It has got 
to such a pitch now that if you don't 
swear or drink, you have to prove in 
some definite way that you are a good 
fellow; the whole appearance of things 
is against you and the burden of the 
proof lies upon you. 

It is a joy to meet a man like Paul, 
who was conscientious enough, but 
avoided the bad results of that good 
habit. He was no moral aristocrat; he 
said, *'I am all things to all men if by 
any means I may win some." He was 
no moral prig; when he called men sin- 
ners he prefaced that statement with 
the confession that he was the chief 
(as the Reverend William Sunday 
19 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

would say) "of the whole bunch." He 
did not cultivate a luxuriously tender 
conscience; when asked about eating 
meat which had been offered to idols, 
he said, " What is sold in the shambles, 
that eat, asking no questions." 

The habit of telling the truth is a 
good habit, you will say. Yes, but oh! 
with such bad results. 

We are in the midst of a perfect epi- 
demic of truth-telling at the present 
time. Apparently sane and responsible 
householders are sitting down and dis- 
cussing such questions as these: Is it 
right to tell the children that Santa 
Claus is coming when it is only Uncle 
Jim dressed up? Or is it right to tell the 
child that the angel brings the new 
baby, instead of telling it the truth as 
to where the baby's soul really did come 
from? 

20 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

But as you look in the eyes of a little 
baby, do you not recognize that angels 
had a great deal more to do with bring- 
ing her to you than doctors? As well 
might you step up behind your friend 
at the opera and whisper in her ear as 
she is enjoying "Lohengrin," that those 
are not real trees, but only pasteboard, 
that that is really not a God-sent man, 
but only an old Italian who in ten min- 
utes will be enjoying a glass of beer be- 
hind the scenes, as to tell your child 
that Santa Glaus is Uncle Jim. It is a 
lie. 

The President is more than Wood- 
row Wilson. Marie Antoinette was more 
than the Widow Gapet. Lohengrin 
is more than the Italian singer. Santa 
Glaus is more than Uncle Jim. Oh! 
how our prosaical truth-tellers have 
tried to destroy all the poetry and 
21 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

beauty of the world! Mistral says if 
some old anatomical professor comes 
up to the lover and tells him that she 
whom he calls his goddess and peerless 
love is merely a grim skeleton stretched 
over, parchment-like, with skin, the 
lover would be justified in shooting 
the professor at sight. To all of which 
I say a most hearty Amen. '*0h, this 
talk of realism! A bird gives us the im- 
pression of flight, not of feathers!" *'I 
would rather be damned for telling a 
kindly lie than saved for telling a cruel 
truth." 

Piety is a good habit and the setting 
apart of a special time every day for 
Bible-reading and prayer. Some of us 
wish we were built that way, but Sam 
Walter Foss has clearly indicated to 
what ill effects even so godly a habit 
may lead: 

22 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

"Run down and get the doctor — quick!" 

Cried Jack Bean with a whoop; 
"Run, Dan; for mercy's sake, be quick! 

Our baby's got the croup." 
But Daniel shook his solemn head. 

His sanctimonious brow, 
And said: "I cannot go, for I 

Must read my Bible now; 
For I have regular hours to read 
The Scripture for my spirit's need." 

Said Silas Gove to Pious Dan, 

"Our neighbor, 'Rastus Wright, 
Is very sick; will you come down 

And watch with him to-night?" 
"He has my sympathy," said Dan, 

"And I would sure be there, 
Did I not feel an inward call 

To spend the night in prayer. 
Some other man with Wright must stay; 
Excuse me while I go and pray." 

"Old Briggs has fallen in the pond!" 

Cried little 'Bijah Brown; 
"Run, Pious Dan, and help him out. 

Or else he sure will drown!" 
"I trust he'll swim ashore," said Dan, 

"But now my soul is awed, 
23 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

And I must meditate upon 

The goodness of the Lord; 
And nothing merely temporal ought 
To interrupt my holy thought." 

So Daniel lived a pious life, 

As Daniel understood, 
But all his neighbors thought he was 

Too pious to be good; 
And Daniel died, and then his soul 

On wings of hope elate, 
In glad expectancy flew up 

To Peter's golden gate. 
"Now let your gate wide open fly. 
Come, hasten, Peter! Here am L'* 

"I'm sorry. Pious Dan," said he, 

"That time will not allow, 
But you must wait a space, for I 

Must read my Bible now." 
So Daniel waited long and long, 

And Peter read all day. 
"Now, Peter, let me in," he cried. 

Said Peter, "I must pray; 
And no mean temporal affairs 
Must ever interrupt my prayers." 

Then Satan, who was passing by. 
Saw Dan's poor shivering form, 
24 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

And said, "My man, it's cold out here; 

Come down where it is warm." 
The angel baby of Jack Bean, 

The angel 'Rastus Wright, 
And Old Briggs, a white angel, too. 

All chuckled with delight; 
And Satan said, "Come, Pious Dan, 
For you are just my style of man.'* ^ 

Diligence is the preeminent American 
virtue. Its bad results are apparent 
to all visitors to this land. Life here 
demands that you fill every moment; 
read the paper in the cars hanging on 
to the strap ; that you get up and stand 
in the aisle five minutes before you 
come into the station. The great thing 
is to be doing something all the time; 
it does not matter so much what you 
are doing. This one good custom has 
corrupted the world. People have for- 

^ By kind permission of Lothrop, Lee & 
Shepard Co., from Whiffs from Wild Meadows, 
by Sam Walter Foss. 

25 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

gotten that just as every great building 
requires a fine site to make it seem 
great and beautiful, so every great idea 
requires atmosphere. Poise, atmosphere, 
calm, these are greater personal attri- 
butes than that of constantly being on 
the rush and if possible even seeming 
busier than you are. 

"A wild and foolish laborer is a king, 
To do and do and do, and never dream." 

One of the latest biographers of Lin- 
coln says truly of him, "He always 
loafed a little"; and years before 
Wordsworth had emphasized the same 
human need, when he said : 

"Nor less I deem that there are powers 
Which of themselves our mind impress; 
That we can feed this mind of ours 
In a wise passiveness. 
Think you 'mid all this mighty sum 
Of things forever speaking, 
That nothing of itself will come, 
But we must still be seeking." 
26 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

The hustler is one of the bad results 
of the good habit of diligence. 

Opposed to that is the attitude of 
one who is in love with the moment — 
the sacramentarian. 

It is worth taking time in this busy 
world to realize the mystery and beauty 
of our common daily lives. The hustler 
looks upon everything as a means to 
something else. The flower is good be- 
cause you can pull it. The bird is wel- 
come because you can shoot at it. An- 
other day is a boon because you can 
make some money in it. No part of life 
is of value in itself. Everything is a 
means to something else. But the sacra- 
mental view of life looks at the passing 
day as the supremely great thing. Home 
courtesy, daily kindness, friendly fel- 
lowship, the beauty of the flower un- 
touched by human hand and with the 
27 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

morning's dew upon it, the one exqui- 
site moment of the bird's song heard in 
the woods — these are the really great 
things. These are the things the hustler 
is apt to trample down in his mad chase 
for some will-o'-the-wisp he calls suc- 
cess, but which he never is ready to 
settle down and possess. How sadly 
often the "Hill of Dreams," as Helen 
Lanyon sings, is bartered away for the 
drab, efficient, uphill drag of the use- 
ful drudge. 

"My grief! for the days that's by an' done, 

When I was a young giri straight an' tall, 
Comin' alone at set o' sun, 

Up the high hill road from Cushendall. 
I thought the miles no hardship then, 

Nor the long road weary to the feet; 
For the thrushes sang in the deep green glen, 

An' the evenin' air was cool an' sweet. 

"My head with many a thought was throng, 
An' many a dream as I never told, 

28 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

My heart would lift at a wee bird's song, 
Or at seein' a whin bush crowned with gold. 

And always I 'd look back at the say, 

Or the turn o' the road shut out the sight 

Of the long waves curlin' into the bay. 
An' breakin' in foam where the sands is 
white. 

"I was married young on a dacent man, 

As many would call a prudent choice, 
But he never could hear how the river ran 

Singin' a song in a changin' voice; 
Nor thought to see on the bay's blue wather 

A ship with yellow sails unfurled, 
Bearin* away a King's young daughter 

Over the brim of the heavin' world. 

"The way seems weary now to my feet, 

An' miles bes many, an' dreams bes few; 
The evenin' air's not near so sweet. 

The birds don't sing as they used to do. 
An' I'm that tired at the top o' the hill. 

That I have n't the heart to turn at all. 
To watch the curlin' breakers fill 

The wee round bay at Cushendall." 

The last good habit of whose bad 
results I shall speak is the habit of 
29 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

cheerfulness. In this respect we live to- 
day in the midst of a great bacchanalia 
of nonsense. 

Let me read you the parable of the 
two workers: 

The first worker sat in a sunny room 
whose windows opened on the street. 
The door was ajar and he could listen 
to the conversation of the neighbors as 
they lingered at the corner. He whistled 
at his work. When he was not whistling 
he smiled. Above his bench hung a 
card and on it in large red letters the 
one word grin. Other mottoes hung 
around, don't worry, and it will be 
ALL THE SAME IN THE END. In this ge- 
nial atmosphere he worked away, smil- 
ing and whistling and throwing a genial 
remark out to a passing neighbor from 
time to time, and the work he turned 
out was no good. 

30 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

The second worker sat upstairs and 
slaved in silence like grim death. He 
worried like anything lest he should 
not get his work just right. Neighborly 
friends knew enough of his ill-nature at 
such times to leave him alone. He did 
not look up to see if the sun was shin- 
ing, but the idea of his own task was 
red-hot within him and he kept his 
eyes upon his work. 

He did not live to be one hundred, 
but the work which he did will live for- 
ever. 

The ancient landmarks that divide 
goodness from badness have stood for 
generations: on the good side of the 
partition are old maids of both sexes 
and none in stiff, ill-fitting Sunday 
clothes; missionary boxes for sending 
tracts to the heathen; gilt-edged di- 
vinity-circuit Bibles, all their poetry 
31 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

finger-marked by dogmatists; "four- 
teenthlies" and ^Tifteenthlies," "Be- 
loved Brethrens" and "Finallies" pre- 
served in an indescribable mixture of 
cant and last week's air; gaseous ig- 
norance expanding rapidly at a high 
temperature of sentimental verbosity; 
holes-in-the-ground labeled "The Uni- 
verse" and puddles labeled "The 
Ocean"; asylums for those who are 
scared of beauty or truth; and huge 
old-clothes shops where the rags of for- 
mer ages are preserved and worshiped. 
As we look at a scene like that to-day, 
we cry, "How in the world did all this 
truck get on this side of the fence?" It 
all belongs on the other side. Quick as 
a wink we whip up the landmark and 
change it over, saying, "All these dull- 
nesses are wholly bad." They are sim- 
ply flagrant examples of naughtiness. 
32 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

Vitality is goodness. To get your 
own vital spark burning bright and 
warm so that countless others will be 
attracted to it to warm their hands and 
hearts there — that is the only mean- 
ing there is for goodness. It is a hard 
task to keep from getting uninspired, 
uninteresting, dull, in life. This stodgy 
condition to which modern men are 
often subject is due largely to the fact 
that men are out of touch with the 
sources of inspiration. The greatest 
source of inspiration is friendly per- 
sonal association with people different 
from one's own kind. 

I suppose the narrowest lives lived 
by any men in the past were lived by 
kings who were entirely surrounded by 
courtiers. They never heard anything 
straight either about themselves or the 
outside world — everything was doc- 
33 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

tored to suit them. That is the position 
in which every modern man tends to 
find himself. He associates with those 
who say the kind of things he hkes to 
hear — comfortable things, reads only 
such papers as say the things he him- 
self would say, goes only to the TBM 
type of play; so that whole scores of 
modern men are absolutely isolated 
from any participation in the mind 
and life of the great host of their fel- 
low-men. Our connection with people 
outside our own set tends to become 
" official" only. 

Rich people and successful people 
have not much of an inner life as a gen- 
eral rule. When they get uneasy, they 
do not have to stay put and work the 
thing out, but they go South, or North, 
or fly along somewhere from the strain 
of thinking. But common people are 
34 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

under the iron hand of necessity, have 
to "stay put" and adjust their inner 
lives to the necessity, and so their point 
of view, when you can get it sincerely, 
is stimulating. The inspiration comes 
from the touch of human life with life. 
When you number among those with 
whom you can frankly interchange 
views an Irish policeman, a few Maine 
fishermen, a bank president or two, a 
number of lawyers, a few Itahans or 
Poles or Russian immigrants, a washer- 
woman, some mothers of big families, 
a lot of high-school children, a few col- 
lege graduates of recent years, last but 
not least some babies — then you are 
not likely to be in a rut yourseK or dull 
in your outlook in life. But how many 
of us do? How many of us dare to talk 
absolutely sincerely to people of a dif- 
ferent kind from ourselves? 
35 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

But people of any kind, good or bad, 
living or dead, sometimes get on your 
nerves; then is the time to revert back 
from people into the woods or the sea. 
The distant view of the mountains, the 
gleam of checkered sunlight falling into 
the bends and turns of the little trout 
brook, the center of the Atlantic on 
a starry night, with the white wake 
of foam, and the endless sea beneath 
the new moon, the first day of spring 
in the garden — these experiences are 
among the very richest that keep us 
from becoming dull drones in the hive 
of life, because they touch our ancient 
memory of a time long ago when we 
were not dull humans, but were sub- 
merged in it, a part of the glow and 
glory of it all. 

But the time has now come to draw 
36 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

together the tangled thread of this dis- 
course and show whither we have been 
tending. The question to be asked now 
is this, ** Shall we not then adopt good 
habits at all?" If good habits have 
such bad results, shall we not avoid 
their formation altogether? To which 
the clear answer is, we are bound to 
form good habits, but we must not look 
upon them as ends in themselves, but 
only as means to a further and greater 
end. 

Morality followed for its own sake 
becomes barren respectability and un- 
interesting routine. 

Truthfulness followed for its own 
sake results in the destruction of the 
poetry and romance of life. 

Diligence pursued for the sake of 
being diligent, results in the life of the 
superficial hustler. 
37 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

Cheerfulness sought after as an end 
in itself freezes upon your face the 
ghastly metaphysical grin. 

You destroy the beauty of what ap- 
pears to be a spontaneous act by con- 
fessing that it is only habitual or done 
out of a grim sense of duty. 

A lonely stranger was cheered by 
having a gentleman talk to him in a 
friendly way as he was coming out of 
a New York church. But his soul was 
chilled when the conversation ended 
with the remark, "We always talk to 
every stranger here," as the man pro- 
fessionally turned aside to greet with 
identical effusion and phrases another 
victim. 

"I came to make one more," was 

the soul-deadening indictment of her 

conduct brought by one lady against 

herself as she greeted the poor minister 

38 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

at the prayer meeting. He had hoped 
that she might even Uke to come. 

Conscious habits are only useful as 
stepping-stones to unconscious person- 
ahty. 

"Our freedom, in the very move- 
ments by which it is afTirmed, creates 
the growing habits that will stifle it if 
it fails to renew itself of a constant ef- 
fort: it is dogged by automatism. The 
most living thought becomes frigid in 
the formula that expresses it. The word 
turns against the idea." (Bergson.) 

The bad result of every good habit 
is that you are so apt to fall in love 
with the habit and to forget its end. 
So many of us good people are merely 
good habits gone mad. We have been 
so prim and petty and precise, so su- 
perior and stodgy and Sunday-clothesy, 
so old-maidish and dogmatic and dull, 
39 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

SO narrow and blind and bedraggled, 
looking for all the world as if, like Eras- 
mus, we were descended from *'a long 
line of maiden aunts." What wonder 
that so many brilliant souls have shied 
at us and taken the wrong turning! 
The most dangerous and destructive 
force in Europe to-day was thus pro- 
duced. The philosophy of Nietzsche, 
the source of German madness, was, we 
are told, originally "a reaction against 
his aunts." 

One of the most pregnant and beau- 
tiful ideas in all literature is the general 
scheme of Dante's Purgatorio. 

We see in it a great sunlit mountain, 
terrace above terrace, peopled by souls 
employed in acquiring good habits and 
purging themselves of bad habits. But 
ever and anon the whole living moun- 
tain trembles and bursts forth into a 
40 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

great song of praise as a soul graduates 
out of this condition into a higher. And 
upon the entrance into the terrestrial 
paradise which is at the summit of this 
mount of purgatory, we see what this 
higher condition is. It is the life in 
which all good habits are in invisible 
solution. Good habits have at last 
merged themselves into a healthy per- 
sonality. 

"Free, upright, healthy is thy will, 
And error were it not to do its bidding: 
Thee o'er thyself I therefore crown and mitre." 

Henceforth not Virgil, the guide of 
consciously formed and reasoned hab- 
its, but Beatrice, the spirit of sponta- 
neous love, is to lead his soul onward 
into boundless life. 

The end of life, then, is not obedi- 
ence to principles, however good, it is 
the love of persons. Not good habits, 
41 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

but daring, original, clean personality. 
Not moral probity, but adventurous 
goodness. Not speaking the truth, but 
**truth-ing it" in love. Not hustling 
through life, but loving each moment 
and making it sublime; not grinning 
superficially, but touching the deepest 
springs of other personalities with joy: 
not, "I believe in things," "I believe 
in the past," but, " I believe in people," 
"I believe in now." 

Life is not an old gentleman's pri- 
vate school of character; it is a great 
adventure. We are a race going out on 
a great adventurous quest. God is not 
the spectator, looking on, nor a re- 
viewer seeing the procession pass by 
his grandstand, nor a kind of infinite 
invalid watching over a dying world; 
nay, far rather God is the Pathfinder 
for us all, the great Forerunner, and 
42 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

Ideal of the human spirit. Wherever 
the human soul arrives in its chase 
breathless, there God has just been be- 
fore. To live aright is to follow God. 

"For Life has no glory 
Stays long in one dwelling. 
And time has no story 
That 's true twice in telling. 

"And only the teaching 
That never was spoken 
Is worthy thy reaching 
The fountain unbroken." 

A. E. 

Out of nothingness, and sleep, out 
of barbarism, out of savagery, here we 
go wave after wave of us flung over 
this single planet generation after gen- 
eration. 

Whither do we all go? That is what 

all poets, seers, prophets, and sages 

have ever been trying to express for 

us, in color and form, in music and song. 

43 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABlf S 

We are out upon the mightiest ad- 
venture of the ages. This is no mere 
moral drill ground with God as ap- 
praiser and spectator, no mere testing 
school for habits. This is an original, 
adventurous campaign upon which we 
are out, with God as fellow adventurer, 
God's heart as well as our own thrilled 
with all the mystery and romance of it 
all, touched both by the splendor and 
flame, the shuddering and the tears, 
"finding even in the worst of tragedies 
the means of an otherwise impossible 
triumph." 

There be some that say there is no 
news in being good. But there is a kind 
of goodness that is news, and that is 
when an individual, fresh, and sponta- 
neous deed flashes out upon the world 
from the heart of an original person- 
ality. 

44 



THE BAD RESULTS OF GOOD HABITS 

" I love my God as He loves me — 
Merrily. 

I feel His kisses in the breeze, 
And so I carve His name in trees — 
Why not? 

Ten thousand years misunderstood. 
He needs my laughter in the wood 
A lot." 



THE DISADVANTAGES 
OF BEING GOOD 

THE twin babies are what are tech- 
nically known as "both kinds"; 
that is to say, he is a boy and she is a 
girl. 

The boy, like all boys, is good. He is 
one of those delightful children who 
have learned in some prenatal state of 
existence the consolation of the thumb. 
His thumb is meat and drink and phil- 
osophy to him. If he loses his bottle, if 
his rattle is taken away from him, if 
his mother forgets him on the bed and 
he slips out and bumps his head on the 
floor, so that the plaster falls from the 
dining-room ceiling below, he does not 
open his mouth to cry at all. Nay, 
rather, with one somewhat reproachful 
46 



THE DISADVANTAGES OF BEING GOOD 

glance at the universe, with a controlled 
gulp of inward distress, he elevates his 
thumb, and, with the sweetest sigh of 
resignation in the world, he slips it, in 
an unobtrusive and well-bred manner, 
into his Uttle mouth. He then proceeds 
quietly and rhythmically to make the 
best of the bad situation. Yes, there is 
no doubt that red-headed George is a 
good boy. His mother is continually 
saying that he is no trouble at all. 

Nor is there any doubt at all that 
Jane is a thoroughly bad child. Al- 
though she, like her brother, is only 
eight months old, yet she has already 
shown all the earmarks of a child of the 
devil, just as her brother is the para- 
gon of all the angeUc virtues. In fact, 
Jane is a typical girl. 

It would be a sad task to repeat all 
Jane's failings. One must be charitable 
47 



THE DISADVANTAGES OF BEING GCfbD 

with our future legislators, and yet, 
when it comes to stealing all her broth- 
er's playthings out of his very grasp, 
and putting her fingers in his eyes to 
try to make him cry, and tearing the 
wall-paper off the wall near her crib — 
well, in spite of gallantry, one really 
has to notice such things. But perhaps 
the infernally bad nature of her dispo- 
sition is best seen in her vocal exercises. 
I have often speculated, when a visitor 
in her home, as to what sound Jane 
could produce if she was having a leg 
sawed off slowly with a blunt saw. She 
makes such incredibly horrible and 
lamentable noises when her milk is not 
quite hot enough to suit her that it seems 
to me she has no margin of possibilities 
left for a more desperate occasion. The 
neighbors have a curious theory that a 
child never cries except when there is 
48 



THE DISADVANTAGES OF BEING GOOD 

something wrong with it. Were I a 
neighbor with that theory, I would of- 
ten believe that Jane was being tor- 
tured, when as a matter of fact Jane 
only wants to pull some one's hair, or 
demands her brother's rattle which he 
is enjoying for a few perilous moments, 
dodging his sister's infuriated grabs. 

Now were the conventional views 
of morality correct, we should all de- 
sire to be good children like George, 
and pray that we may not be bad chil- 
dren like Jane. 

But one cannot study the situation 
closely without seeing that there are 
very grave disadvantages in being good. 
George has never had a good time in 
his whole life. He is simply dressed and 
kissed, and told he is a good boy, and 
slung down somewhere and forgotten 
till Jane's voice informs the household 

49 



THE DISADVANTAGES OF BEING GOOD 

it must be time for both children to be 
fed. Jane, on the other hand, has all 
the good times. She pulls the hair of all 
the visitors, and is toted around and 
allowed to come down with the rest of 
the family at all meal times. She has 
all the new toys and gets the most to 
eat. Why? Because she is bad in such a 
bewitching way. Because her mother 
and father simply have to do what she 
wants them to do if they wish to live 
in her house at all. 

So one day, when his mother was not 
around, I took little George upon my 
knee, and, gently removing his thumb 
from his mouth, spoke to him as fol- 
lows: 

"My dear boy, goodness is a very es- 

tunable thing; in fact, a very valuable 

characteristic, indeed. Understand me 

now, I do not wish to minimize its 

50 



THE DISADVANTAGES OF BEING GOOD 

value in the world at all. But, if the 
truth be told, lots of goodness is only 
tameness, and lots of badness is called 
bad only because it makes the people 
who think themselves good feel un- 
comfortable. Allow me to say, my dear 
fellow, that you would be a far better 
man if you were not so good. In fact, 
Jane is a far better man than you are. 
Jane is training her parents to unsel- 
fishness and hardihood. Jane's father 
before he was married would have con- 
sidered it impossible to do his day's 
work unless he had his nine hours' 
sleep every night. Since Jane came 
he is very thankful to get four. Jane 
makes all the people about her think 
of some one besides themselves; she 
is saving people from being selfish. 
Though she is bad, every one likes her. 
And into the bargain she is having a 
51 



THE DISADVANTAGES OF BEING G0(3D 

good time herself; she is developing her 
lungs and her power of grasp. But you 
will excuse my saying that you are do- 
ing nothing for the people around you. 
For all that you do for them, they are 
as selfish and luxurious in their habits 
as ever. And you yourself are not get- 
ting the pleasure out of life you might! 
You will not be of as much use to the 
world. Your goodness is too negative. 
As the old hymn says: 

"*The whole world loves the quiet men 
Who sit all day as still as owls; 

But 't is needless to mention 

It gives its attention 
To the man who gets up and howls.* 

"Or, to put the matter in another 
way, goodness to be any good must be 
interesting as well as good. 

"And the moral is," I hastened to 
add, as I saw George beginning to ele- 
52 



I 



THE DISADVANTAGES OF BEING GOOD 

vate his thumb again preparatory to 
closing the interview — "the moral is, 
either be bad like Jane, or be good in 
such an active and adventurous way 
as to be more interesting than she is." 



HOW TO CONTROL YOUR 
FUTURE 

YOU must, of course, choose your 
great-grandparents very carefully 
if you want to be a really great 
man or woman. The way you smiled 
just now was first invented by your 
great -grand -aunt - on - your - mother's 
side. Your delight in music was born 
in your great-grandmother's mother's 
soul in the parlor in the old farmhouse 
over the piano Sunday afternoons. And 
your dislike for cats is due to a fright 
her mother had in the barn when a kit- 
ten fell upon her in the dark. The de- 
sire to steal was strained out of your 
family six generations ago by a grand- 
uncle who refused to steal apples in his 

54 



HOW TO CONTROL YOUR FUTURE 

youth, though greatly tempted to do 
SO. Any one has only to read one of 
your grandparents' old love letters to 
see why you are so romantic. In fact, 
you are not really "you" at all, you 
are merely the present phase of your 
family. Still, much depends upon you; 
your family, like the moon, runs 
through its various phases; you must 
see to it that in you it does not become 
fool. Heredity is a great force, and all 
you are is due to it. Somewhere within 
you is the race-home where the family 
of whom you are the visible represent- 
ative live. There live the brute, the 
savage, the tribal chief, the crusader, 
the Mayflower passenger, the colonial 
dame, etc., to omit mention of many 
awkward poor relations. All of them at 
times try to pry open the door and 
stalk abroad into your life. Yes, there 

55 



HOW TO CONTROL YOUR FUTURE 

are even traces of Father Adam and 
Mother Eve in us all. 

It may in fact be said of us all as it 
was said of a Chinaman of note: 

"Now the father, whose name was Hang U. 
High, 
Was the last of the race of the great I. Ligh, 
The father of Chinese history. 
He was very proud of his pedigree. 
And even declared that his lineage ran 
In a line direct to the very first man." 

But heredity, while it is without 
doubt the greatest force in controlling 
your future, is like predestination in 
this, that we do not know anything 
about it. It works, but we do not know 
how it works. All geniuses can be ex- 
plained by the forces of heredity as we 
wisely assert, only we do not know how 
to explain them. Few geniuses are the 
children of genius. LL.D., Ph.D., D.D. 
marries M.A., Litt.D., and their son is 
56 



HOW TO CONTROL YOUR FUTURE 

Fiddle D.D. Seeing that this is so, 
there are two main objections to start- 
ing the work of controUing your future 
by choosing your great-grandparents 
carefully : (1) You cannot do it, it is too 
late now; and (2) you would not know 
whom to choose if it were possible. 

Seeing that these things are so, per- 
haps it might just be as well to accept 
yourself as your race has made you and 
try even with such poor material to 
control your future. 

A visit to a clairvoyant is a very 
popular way of starting to control your 
future. She will astonish you by her in- 
formation. Noticing the style of your 
clothes, she will tell you that you are a 
man or woman as the case may be. 
With an eye on the ring on your finger, 
she will reveal certain other secrets of 
your life. She will then proceed to as- 

57 



HOW TO CONTROL YOUR FUTUR^ 

tonish you by her sketch of your future 
life. Every word she says will come 
true. She said you would have a great 
loss soon, and you had to have a tooth 
extracted the very next month. She 
said a dear relative would soon weep, 
and your mother's cousin lost a pet 
dog next week. She told you the busi- 
ness you were at would soon change; 
that the difficulty was coming; that, if 
you stood firm, you would get through 
it all right; that there was one who 
loved you, and the way you looked 
when she said that, told her that she 
was safe in going further; and she 
prophesied everything just as it has 
come to pass with you — and with 
every one else since the beginning of 
the world. Wonderful! Is it not? The 
fact is that there are so many coinci- 
dences in this world that any indefinite 

58 



HOW TO CONTROL YOUR FUTURE 

prophecy you like to make will come 
to pass. Try it yourself. Prophesy a 
few things about yourself at random: 
*'I will meet an old friend soon, whom 
I have not seen for years. I shall have 
a curious dream. I shall have a great 
success." You will find that they will 
all come to pass sooner or later except 
that you will have forgotten, and you 
will have saved the clairvoyant's fee. 
This is a world where most people's 
lives are written on their selves to a 
Sherlock Holmes; it is a world of coin- 
cidences where any indefinite prophecy 
is sure to come to pass ultimately; it 
is a world where we remember the 
times the thing we are looking for hap- 
pened and forget the times it did not 
happen, so it is a great world for clair- 
voyants. 
But in the end they never help you 

59 



HOW TO CONTROL YOUR FUTURE 

much in controlling your future. How 
can you do it? Is it on Pull and Chance 
that we must depend? No, I think it is 
upon Work and Trust. 

Efficiency in the circle within your 
own control, and confidence in the jus- 
tice of the circle without your own 
control, possess these, and the future 
is yours. 

After the mysteries of heredity and 
clairvoyancy it seems a paltry ending. 
Work as hard and as wisely as you can, 
trust the universe and the Father's 
heart at the center of the universe, and 
the world lies all open before you like 
the promised land. It may be years be- 
fore you enter it, but it is yours all the 
time in certain prospect. Work never 
has failed in the end, trust never was 
disappointed in the end. The reason 
that so many of us have not controlled 
60 



HOW TO CONTROL YOUR FUTURE 

our futures better according to this 
simple law is that we would much 
rather sit in the sun on the piazza dis- 
cussing heredity and clairvoyancy than 
work Hke Trojans at the appointed 
task which is to prepare us for the great 
future. 



THE FOLLY OF GETTING 
THERE 

THE great thing in life is not 
to get there, it is to be getting 
there. The fun, as a general rule, is 
over when you do get there; the fun is 
on the way. But we have all got the 
extraordinary idea that fixity is some- 
how a nobler thing than progress; that 
there is more fun in having done a 
thing than in doing it. "Isn't that a 
glorious view?" exclaims the automo- 
bilist to his traveling companion, and 
in the same breath she answers, "Yes, 
it was"; for they are both interested 
in getting to Twenty-Third Street 
which is their destination. The "glori- 
ous views" through which they are 
passing are just "the preliminary serv- 
62 



THE FOLLY OF GETTING THERE 

ices" to getting there. "I want to fin- 
ish this novel," we say, just as we say, 
too, "I want to say I've seen this pic- 
ture," and we take a passing glance at 
it. Like the Irish peasants, we all want 
to be "after doing a thing." 

A group of visitors were being shown 
through one of the rooms of the Na- 
tional Gallery in London by an expert 
who accompanied the party and de- 
scribed each picture for them. The 
business director of the party had been 
listening to the description in a con- 
scientious manner as he was looking 
up some railway time-tables which he 
held in his hand. When it was over, he 
wished to add his word to the expert's 
exposition. He said: "There is one 
thing, ladies and gentlemen, which has 
not been mentioned, I think, which I 
would like to have you all notice es- 

63 



THE FOLLY OF GETTING THERE 

pecially. All the pictures in this room 
are originals — not copies, but origi- 
nals. Now it is a great thing to be able 
to say you have seen an original of 
these pictures." To which the expert 
added sotto voce, "Yes, and it is a 
greater thing to have seen them!" In 
his heart a passer-by added, "Yes, and 
it is a still greater thing to be seeing 
them!" 

The absolute folly of our prevailing 
mood of mind in this respect is espe- 
cially noticeable in our vacation tours. 
Our first end is to get packed. Then it 
is to get to the station in time for the 
train, and all the time in the train we 
worry as to whether it will get in, in 
time to catch the boat. On the boat we 
count up the run every day in the hopes 
of getting there a day earlier. We have 
a terrible scramble to get our baggage 

64 



THE FOLLY OF GETTING THERE 

off first, in order that we may catch 
the first train for London. We do Lon- 
don, worrying much the last two days 
lest anything should occur to keep us 
from reaching Paris on time. We leave 
Paris with a sigh of relief that we have 
got there, at any rate, but hoping that 
nothing will delay the train which is 
to bring us to Berlin. Somewhere be- 
tween Paris and Berlin we begin to 
worry about our homeward trip, and 
the Mecca of our souls now is "to get 
through things" in time to get the 
boat at Liverpool which is to bring us 
home. Once we are home, we feel we 
shall have "got there," and full felic- 
ity will be ours. 

We missed the fun of packing, we 

missed the fun of going to the station 

in a cab with our trunk strapped on 

behind. We missed the fun of sitting 

^5 



THE FOLLY OF GETTING THERE 

in the train feeling we had nothing to 
do for six weeks and a visit to Europe 
before us. We missed the fun of lying 
for seven days like a primeval savage 
on our back in the sun thinking of 
nothing while the innumerable laugh- 
ter of the sea waves stretched around 
us as far as eye could reach. We missed 
the fun of landing in England, of loaf- 
ing in London, of reverting to Angli- 
cism, of dreaming half a day in W^est- 
minster. We never let Paris have time 
to soak into us, and all we remember 
of Berlin is the intricacy of the time- 
tables of trains and boats to bring us 
back to Liverpool. We got there — 
that is to say, we got home again 
where we started from — and found 
too late that we had missed the fun en 
route. 
All this is due to a defect in the hu- 

66 



THE FOLLY OF GETTING THERE 

man mind, for which, if we hke, we 
can blame Plato and Aristotle. It is 
the result of their static philosophy. 
Everything must be motionless before 
it is worthy of investigation: so they 
seemed to think as they reduced life 
to essences and states. So we seem to 
think as we refuse to take our joy on 
the wing as it is alive, and rush on to 
kill it and have it canned, thus killing 
the real life of joy which is in coming 
and going, nay, most of all, in becom- 
ing. So the parents pray for stage after 
stage of their children's life to be safely 
reached, worrying through each one 
about their passage to the next, till at 
last they do get there; that is, all the 
children are safely married and away 
from home, and the lonely birds in the 
empty nest begin to wonder if they 
could not have enjoyed their children 
67 



THE FOLLY OF GETTING THERfe 

more in each of the different stages as 
they were going along. 

There are two useful principles in 
life which, if remembered, will do a 
great deal to correct this defect in our 
popular attitude toward life. 

The happiest thing in life is not to get 
something: it is to be doing something. 

Fight as we will against it, we all 
have implicitly at the back of our minds 
the assumption that the end of all en- 
deavor is somehow to attain to the dig- 
nity of sitting still in the full possession 
of many things. '* Soul, thou hast much 
goods laid up for many years: take 
thine ease!" That idea in one form or 
another is El Dorado of all our hopes. 
As a race we have not even been able 
so far to imagine a heaven that we 
would not be all deadly tired of in a 
week. It is because all the heavens we 
68 



THE FOLLY OF GETTING THERE 

have been able to imagine are expressed 
in terms of these two ideals, possession 
and sitting still. We have our golden 
harp, we sit upon our throne. The rea- 
son why all our heavens are dull is a 
simple one. In the slang American 
phrase it is because there is ''nothing 
doing." Receiving is possessing, but 
giving is doing something and is more 
blessed. Let us all make up our minds 
to it; no combination of outward cir- 
cumstances, no possessions of any kind, 
can give us happiness; happiness is a 
state of doing and of becoming. No 
state of circumstances that you could 
devise would give it to you except by a 
corresponding change in yourself. Hap- 
piness is an inward activity of the self, 
for the second principle is this, The 
most important thing in life is not to have 
got anywhere, it is to be going somewhere. 

69 



THE FOLLY OF GETTING THERfe 

If to get there is the great end of Hfe, 
then the important thing about you is 
how you die. We are all going either 
into the grave (it is a terribly danger- 
ous world this, and it is a question 
whether any of us will get out of it 
alive), or we are going to shrink and 
shrivel up into extreme old age (and 
the end of that can be seen in the ex- 
perience of Methuselah, who upon his 
nine hundredth birthday said he was 
feeling very well if only his shoe-strings 
would not flap so in his face). If the 
end is the thing, such is the end. But 
the end is not the thing, the thing is 
how we go along, how we behave at 
breakfast and in the street car on this 
day of the year of our grace. In your 
home the end of all things is of com- 
paratively little importance compared 
with the passing day. The question is 
70 



THE FOLLY OF GETTING THERE 

not as to whether you will live to be 
a well-preserved old gentleman like 
Methuselah; it is not as to whether 
you will get your soul safely saved in 
heaven; it is as to whether you say 
your word of cheer and do your deed of 
kindliness in the light of this dull, com- 
mon-place, every-day world. Break- 
fast is the test of all Christianity; at 
breakfast it shall be known. Christi- 
anity is the philosopher's stone which 
turns every moment it touches into 
gold. To be saved is to be in love with 
the moment. 

You remember Marzial's little trag- 
edy concerning the man who thought 
the end of life was to get there? — 

"She was only a woman, famished for loving, 
Mad for devotion and such slight things; 

And he was a very great musician. 
And used to finger his fiddle strings. 

71 



THE FOLLY OF GETTING THERE 

"Her heart's sweet gamut is cracking and 
breaking 
For a look, for a touch — for such slight 
things; 
But he 's such a very great musician, 

Grimacing and fing'ring his fiddle strings." 

Each moment comes to us as neu- 
tral. To each of us is given a magic 
wand with which to touch it and trans- 
figure it. Our touch will make it either 
an angel or a devil. Toward each one 
of us now are coming, in strong, level 
flight, countless thousands of these 
angelic possibilities. One touch from 
us, and they may become for all time 
beautiful spirits. But he who rushed 
through life in order to get to heaven, 
when he arrived there found it empty, 
swept, and garnished; and, when he 
asked, "Where are the angels?" the 
answer came: "You have been passing 
them unnoticed with the swiftness of 
72 



THE FOLLY OF GETTING THERE 

lightning, sixty every minute for the 
last fifty years. The only angels in 
heaven are those you bring with you." 
Being tired and disappointed, he asked 
for his throne upon which to sit down, 
but he was informed that there are 
no seats in heaven because there is no 
weariness there. What we call struggle 
here, there is peace. What we call love 
here, there is rest. Heaven is a road, 
not a hall. 

"This common road, with hedges high. 
Confined on either hand, 
Will surely enter by and by 
Some large, luxurious land. 

"The many wayfarers on foot 

Have toiled from stage to stage. 
And others roll along the route 
With easy equipage. 

"All seek, methinks, that palace hall 
Whereon my thoughts are set. 
Press onward! Hear the angels call I 
'Hasten I 'T is farther yet I' 

73 



THE FOLLY OF GETTING THEltE 

"Dreamer! In vain thou hastenest; 
That golden throne resign; 
Take by the road thy joy, thy rest; 
The road, the road is thine." 



THE REVISION OF THE TEN 
COMMANDMENTS 

I SEE by the papers that there is 
a movement afoot for the revi- 
sion of the Ten Commandments. This 
comes as a great reUef to me, as I have 
never felt quite easy about them in my 
own mind. It has always seemed to me 
that they are written from the wrong 
point of view. 

Now there are but two points of 
view from which the world may be re- 
garded. You may look at the world 
from the inside of the automobile or 
you may look at the world from out- 
side of the automobile, in as far as the 
dust will permit you to see any world 
at all. My objection to the Ten Com- 
mandments has always been that they 

75 



REVISION OF THE COMMANDMENTS 

are written from the inside of the auto- 
mobile, while all my life I have been 
outside in the dust and smell. Let us 
look at them for a few moments, that 
we may see if this analysis is not cor- 
rect. 

The first commandment insists that 
I shall not dare to take as my God any 
god except the god of the man who is 
in power. The poor man must not wor- 
ship a god of his own: he must worship 
the god which the upper classes think 
best for him. 

The second commandment declares 
that the poor and unlearned man must 
make no tangible representation of his 
god for an aid to his worship. The rich 
and educated do not need any such 
help to grasp their metaphysical deity; 
therefore the poor and concrete-minded 
man must not have it. 

76 



REVISION OF THE COMMANDMENTS 

The third commandment infers that, 
while the favored classes can laugh at 
the petty gods of the submerged tenth, 
it is blasphemy for the ignorant to scoff 
at the god which the scholars consider 
best for them. 

The fourth commandment is the 
pronouncement of a class rich enough 
to have ''manservant and maidservant 
and cattle" as to how other people 
shall keep the weekly holiday in such 
a way as not to annoy the leisured and 
cultured classes at their worship or 
their golf. 

The fifth commandment can be kept 
only by those successful enough to be 
able to save a little something to put 
by to care for their parents in old age. 

The sixth commandment against 
murder is always the safeguard of tyr- 
anny. 

77 



REVISION OF THE COMMANDMENTS 

The seventh commandment is the 
precept of a class moneyed enough to 
marry and support a home whenever 
it will. 

The eighth commandment is the 
bulwark of the propertied classes and 
always has been against those upon 
whose shoulders they are standing. 

The ninth commandment is the de- 
nial of the right of the consumer to in- 
vestigate the ways of the producer lest 
he say unjust things. 

The tenth commandment preaches 
the time-worn lesson which the rich 
charity visitor has ever preached to 
the poor family — that they ought to 
be content with their lot, and not ask 
any fairer division of the good things 
of this life than God has vouchsafed 
to grant at the present time. 

I should like to make my suggestion 
78 



REVISION OF THE COMMANDMENTS 

as to a real revision of these Ten Com- 
mandments from the point of view of 
the man outside the automobile : 

1. Thou shalt not insist that other 
people shall worship thy god. 

2. Thou shalt not dictate how other 
people shall worship their god. 

3. Thou shalt not take the name of 
the gods of others in vain. 

4. Remember to keep one day in 
seven sacred to the health and happi- 
ness of others. 

5. So live that every one may have 
a chance to honor his parents and pro- 
vide for them in old age. 

6. Thou shalt not make the toiler 
hate thee and thy class by living an 
easy, idle, and heartless life. Thou 
shalt care for the health and safety of 
those who work for thee as if their 
health and life were thine own. 

79 



REVISION OF THE COMMANDMENTS 

7. Thou shall pay thy workers 
enough so that they can marry and 
support a home of their own in com- 
fort. Thou shalt not pay thy women 
workers less than enough to support 
an honest life. 

8. Thou shalt not tempt thy fellow- 
man to steal by treating him merely 
as a cog to be worked or left idle at 
pleasure in the dividend-producing ma- 
chine. 

9. Thou shalt not manipulate thy 
capital in such an inhuman manner 
that the toilers and consumers shall 
in the end come to believe every evil 
against thee. 

10. Thou shalt not display thy 
wealth in such a manner as to make 
others less wealthy feel uncomfortable. 
Thou shalt not dress thy children so 
expensively as to make the hearts of 

80 



REVISION OF THE COMMANDMENTS 

all other children and of their parents 
to be sore within them. 

But as the very young curate said 
to the London congregation, "But, 
dearly beloved, we must not be too 
hard upon the twelve apostles." Per- 
haps the meaning in my revised form 
of the Ten Commandments is really 
in great part unplicit in them in their 
original form. Perhaps it is only be- 
cause most of the editions published 
of them have been for automobile use 
only that they have sometimes seemed 
to be a weapon to be used by the prop- 
ertied and successful classes against 
the toilers of forge and furnace and 
those who are down and out. 

At any rate, there is a better com- 
mandment than any of them which at 
the same time includes all that is best 
in them all. These are but fences placed 

81 



REVISION OF THE COMMANDMENTS 

at the most dangerous points to save 
some of those who may have strayed 
from the Way of Life; but up along 
the whole mountain-side, in the Way 
itself, like a gleaming thread in the 
sunshine, there runs the Golden Rule, 
to follow which is perfect freedom. 



WHY MINISTERS PLAY GOLF 

THE only really grave defect in 
Gutmann's monumental work, 
"The Sport of the Clergy," is the 
omission of an adequate treatment of 
the game of goK. It is monstrous that 
in a work where one whole volume is 
devoted to Surplices and fully ten 
pages to Theology, that Golf should 
be passed over with a paltry para- 
graph. For the benefit of any of our 
readers who may be outside the reach 
of Mr. Carnegie's generosity we quote 
this inadequate paragraph. Gutmann, 
after speaking of the various outdoor 
sports favored by the clergy, such as 
street-walking, doorbell-ringing, and 
en-graving, comes at last to golf which 
he defines as follows: 
83 



WHY MINISTERS PLAY GOLF* 

"Golf is a game indulged in by Pres- 
byterian ministers. It is played with 
short poles similar to those formerly 
used to take church offerings. A man 
and a boy generally play together. 
The boy carries a bag with the various 
poles. The man selects seriatim the 
poles from the bag. The game, the in- 
terest of which it is said cannot be 
appreciated by an outsider, includes 
walking over certain fields called links ^ 
with the boy. The poles are frequently 
used to remove portions of the turf, so 
that the succeeding party can follow 
the tracks of the one going before" 
(pp. 164, 165, vol. vi). Now altogether, 
apart from the serious omission of all 
mention of the ball, which, in the case of 

* A term derived from the German, because, 
in good play, after any stroke, as much of these 
as possible should be left, 

84 



WHY MINISTERS PLAY GOLF 

all but the merest beginners' play, forms 
such an important feature of the game, 
this account is upon other grounds en- 
tirely misleading. For very few cler- 
gymen, and those only in the larger 
churches, can afford a caddy at all. 
As a matter of fact, most ministers 
carry their own bag of staves. 

Passing from Gutmann's bulky work 
we find this subject noticed next in an 
excellent little brochure on Golf pub- 
lished by the Evangelistic Association. 
The theory advanced here as to why 
ministers play golf is, however, errone- 
ous. The supreme interest of the game, 
according to this authority, centers 
upon the search after and recovery of 
the lost. Now it can only be stated that 
this is a mere outsider's view of the 
game. To an onlooker the links often 
do seem to be covered with groups 

85 



WHY MINISTERS PLAY GOLF 

of individuals knee-deep in weeds or 
among bushes or poking their clubs, 
as the poet beautifully says, "by the 
banks of streams," all apparently in 
search of something. The present 
writer himself once saw an outsider 
acutely observing a member of such a 
party who was on his hands and knees 
among some nettles looking down a 
hole in the ground. After some logical 
thought this friend asked the following 
question, "Have you lost your ball?" 
This astounding supposition was im- 
mediately corrected by the player, who 
informed the questioner politely of his 
mistaken inference, adding that the 
object of his search was the ten tribes 
of Israel. 

The cheerfulness with which this 
reply was given probably misled the 
well-meaning writer in the above-men- 
86 



WHY MINISTERS PLAY GOLF 

tioned publication of the Evangelistic 
Association. The fact is that non-play- 
ers in general are apt 16 place too much 
emphasis both upon the movements 
of real estate and upon the side excur- 
sions which are a mere incident in golf 
and of very little real importance in 
the game itself. They are but the re- 
laxations indulged in by players from 
the strain of continuous playing which 
is intense. It is necessary, before com- 
ing to the real solution of this subject, 
to dispense with yet one other incor- 
rect theory. 

The Rationalistic Press in its Tracts 
for the Times No. 265, under the cap- 
tion, "Why Ministers Play GoK," ad- 
vances the theory that the reason is 
simply this, that in golf everything de- 
pends upon a good lie. The Rational- 
istic Press is avowedly inimical to the 
87 



WHY MINISTERS PLAY GOLF- 

cloth, and we cannot help feeling that 
some of this bias has crept into their 
analysis of our problem; for, as a mat- 
ter of fact, the actual state of the case 
— we state for the benefit of the Ra- 
tionalistic Press — is simply this, that 
in golf a good lie is better than a bad 
lie. 

Coming, then, to the really serious 
discussion of this great question, we 
may say, from an insider's point of 
view, that there are two main reasons 
why ministers play golf. 

(1) A great deal of mystery has al- 
ways centered around the question. 
Who made the golf links? 

Beginners at the game are often 
worried over this problem. Only ex- 
perience can bring at last home to the 
soul the true answer. As one goes on 
with the game, one finds every hole 

88 



WHY MINISTERS PLAY GOLF 

guarded with diabolic traps, every 
green gratuitously broken by humps 
and hollows, every long drive spoiled 
by hazards, real and suggested. Sud- 
denly the real fact that every golfer 
knows, but seldom speaks about, dawns 
upon one: the Devil made the golf 
links. The whole game is a metaphor. 
The white ball is the soul. It is the duty 
of the priest to guide the unsullied soul 
from stage to stage over a course filled 
with traps, bunkers, and hazards, by 
the Evil One himself. He who has to 
lay the fewest strokes upon the soul he 
guides safely home wins the game. Golf, 
then, seemingly only a game, is really 
a ritual. It is especially popular with 
the low-church and protestingly Prot- 
estant clergy, who find in it the same 
expression of high ideals which the 
priests of other faiths embody in the 
89 



WHY MINISTERS PLAY GOLF • 

performance of elaborate rites and 
ceremonies. And golf has the advan- 
tage of being in the open air. 

(2) The second reason why minis- 
ters play golf is somewhat different. 

It is well known that the ministry is 
a very irritating occupation. Ministers 
must accept all sorts of abuse silently. 
They must with doormat humility be 
all things to all women. The result is 
that, being but human, they accumu- 
late a vast supply of unexpressed pro- 
fanity. Some ministers work this off 
upon their wives. But the nobler sort 
work it off in the long, profane silences 
of golf. It is not merely in the vicious- 
ness with which the ball (for the time 
being representing some irritating pa- 
rishioner) may be struck that relief 
comes. It is still more in the silence 
that falls hke bahn upon the players 
90 



WHY MINISTERS PLAY GOLF 

when an easy putt has been missed. In 
ordinary Ufe silence is unexpressive. In 
the game of golf such silence is elo- 
quent, almost eschatological; indeed I 
myself have sometimes noticed a dis- 
tinct sulphurous odor upon the putting 
green during such a silence. Many a 
minister has worked off three weeks' 
store of parish worry in one such 
golphic silence. 

Little more can be said in the pres- 
ent state of our knowledge upon this 
profound subject. One can only con- 
clude by referring to what is, after all, 
the most exhaustive study of the in- 
ner significance of the game Professor 
Niblick Green's great work, "The Psy- 
chology of Golf" (Putt Lectures, Saint 
Andrew's, 1903). In chapter five we 
find the f ollowingsuggestive paragraph 
with which we conclude this study: 
91 



WHY MINISTERS PLAY GOLF 

"The worst hazard is a mental haz- 
ard. It is as hard to hit a golf-ball as 
to speak in public, and for the same 
reason. The following three rules will 
be a great help to beginners in both 
cases: 

" Keep your eye on the ball; 

"Keep your feet on the ground; 

"Garry your stroke through." 



SOME INEXPENSIVE HOUSE- 
HOLD LUXURIES 

THE necessities of life have all risen 
in price, but the real luxuries are 
still inexpensive. Bread and meat are 
dear, but love and jokes are as cheap 
as sunshine and moonshine. Necessi- 
ties are so costly that ahnost the only 
way an honest man can live is by steal- 
ing. But in this respect one can have 
a perfectly good conscience about the 
real luxuries, for like the best kisses 
they must by their very nature be 
stolen. They are the fairy fruit which 
must be snatched at only in passing 
and enjoyed incidentally, as ahnost 
inadvertently. 
In the social life of the home we of- 

93 



INEXPENSIVE HOUSEHOLD LUXU!\IES 

ten come to the edge of a precipice or 
up against a stone wall. In a moment 
we know we shall be over the edge; in 
a moment there will be harsh words 
and estrangement, with or without 
temper and tears. Or it may be we feel 
ourselves helpless in the face of an 
unspeakable situation, desperately im- 
potent. Now the real title of this arti- 
cle (as the knight explained to Alice) 
is "Luxurious ways of meeting con- 
versationally difScult domestic situa- 
tions." 

"It is a good thing," said the sage, 
"to know the truth and to be able to 
talk about the truth ;'but it is a better 
thing to know the truth and be able to 
talk about palm trees." 

There should be a large picture of 
the irrelevant pahn trees in every 
home. When Martha and I get into 

94 



INEXPENSIVE HOUSEHOLD LUXURIES 

a discussion now, we seldom run the 
syllogistic stage into its infinite series, 
as we used to do, but according to a 
tacit understanding, the victory is ac- 
corded to the one who is the first to no- 
tice "How cool the pahn trees look to- 
night!" The palm trees stand for the 
impotence of logic to settle anything 
worth settling. After we have talked 
about them for a while, and about our 
neighbor's dog, we are conscious that 
there was nothing to be discussed. The 
irrelevant settled it for us. 

So, too, when the junkman has of- 
fered you a dollar and you have said 
you will not take less than two for your 
old stove, do not let the junkman be 
the first to notice the weather and com- 
ment upon the prospect of early rain, 
but introduce your pahn trees imme- 
diately. In nine cases out of ten you 
95 



INEXPENSIVE HOUSEHOLD LUXURIES 

will find that the irrelevant will bring 
up his price. 

But the greatest value of palm trees 
is their humanizing influence. When 
you get desperately busy and worried 
and serious, when the market is bad 
and will keep on growing worse if peo- 
ple do not attend to what you say, 
when things are all going to the dogs 
simply because men will act so idiotic, 
though it is perfectly clear what they 
ought to do — then it is well to ease 
off your intense voice when you get 
home for a while and talk about palm 
trees. They afford great scope for dis- 
cussion, and after you have dwelt upon 
them for a few moments from various 
points of view, you will find that either 
you or the other people will have got 
sense. 

Blessed is the man who, going 
96 



Ji 



INEXPENSIVE HOUSEHOLD LUXURIES 

through the ways of this world, dusty 
with all its infinitely little gibble-gab- 
ble and humbug, yet remains serene 
and happy because it all affords him 
such an opportunity to talk to his 
heart's content upon that greatest of 
all subjects, palm trees. The saturated 
solution does not crystallize till some 
irrelevant object is introduced into it; 
it will crystallize beautifully around a 
straw. In a similar way, thought often 
crystallizes around a palm tree. 

Hamerton writes to a young friend, 
referring to a family scene he had wit- 
nessed: "Your mother asked you to 
what part of America your friend B. 
had emigrated, and you answered, 
*The Argentine Republic' A shade of 
displeasure crossed your mother's face 
because she did not know where the 
Argentine Republic was. You impru- 
97 



INEXPENSIVE HOUSEHOLD LUXURIES 

dently added that it was in South 
America. 'Yes, yes, I know very well,' 
she answered; 'there was a great battle 
there during the American War. It is 
well your friend was not there under 
Jefferson Davis.'" 

Hamerton goes on to say, "That 
was a perfectly magnificent chance for 
you to hold your tongue." But who of 
us would have done it? Not one. We 
would all have snorted as the war 
horse for the fray, and afTirmed, and 
explained, and at length fetched the 
atlas to prove to one indignant and 
blinded with tears that she had be- 
come confused between the Southern 
States and South America. 

Reader, I see you are hanging your 

head; so am I. Fellow seekers after 

truth, lend me your ears that I may 

whisper into their furry depths: "In 

98 



INEXPENSIVE HOUSEHOLD LUXURIES 

the life of the home there is a time to 
speak, and a time to keep silence." 

Some people have not brains enough 
to be silly themselves. But few people 
can resist the solvent influence of a 
piece of really excellent fooling intro- 
duced at the right time. We all of us, 
of course, perceive the profound phi- 
losophy which underlies the remark 
of Mr. Weller, Senior, that "circum- 
wented" is a **more tenderer" word 
than "circumscribed," but we do not 
apply this principle with enough of 
our forefathers' inflexible moral cour- 
age to the life of the home. The ir- 
relevant is sometimes only irritating, 
silence, infuriating, but there are few 
situations that will not yield to the 
subtle influence of the irrationally ab- 
surd. 

George Meredith begins his simple 



INEXPENSIVE HOUSEHOLD LUXURIES 

little ode, ''To the Comic Spirit," with 
the words, "Sword of Common Sense ! " 
It is hard to tell whether the rest of the 
poem is an explanation or an exempli- 
fication of the comic spirit, but this 
line is both. Fellow mariners, in the 
wild adventure of domesticity, take 
this sword; with it you will be able to 
cut many a Gordian knot. 

Humor takes brains; foolishness does 
not, and it is of foolishness I speak; 
humor is too subtle a product for this 
work. The worst quarrel which Martha 
and I have ever had — which brought 
us, indeed, both to visit the public li- 
brary at the same time surreptitiously 
to look up the conditions of the divorce 
laws — this worst quarrel was as to 
whether there had been two or three 
clergymen ofTiciating in an Episcopal 
church we had attended that morn- 
100 



INEXPENSIVE HOUSEHOLD LUXURIES 

ing. I remember how just at its dark- 
est hour that misunderstanding was 
cleared up by an excellent piece of 
foolishness which Martha sprung upon 
me. I should gladly tell you of it, for 
the very thought of it makes me feel 
wiser and better still. But the pecul- 
iarity of all foolishness is that, being so 
brainless, it is impossible to retell it. 

But if all these fail; if the spark 
of irrelevance goes out into darkness 
again, if silence is barren, if foolishness 
falls flat, is there no last desperate re- 
sort? One thing only can I recommend. 
I know it seems an old-fashioned rem- 
edy, but it sometimes does work. I 
am inclined to think that a man talks 
more sense during his courtship than 
at any other time in his life. There are 
two philosophic lines which are too ob- 
scure for the ordinary mind to grasp, 
101 



INEXPENSIVE HOUSEHOLD LUXURIES 

and yet which contain more sound so- 
ciological verity than any other two 
lines ever written upon the social ques- 
tion. They are worth your study. They 
are these: 

"A little bit of love 
Makes a very happy home." 



UNORTHODOX INTER- 
PRETATIONS 

WHEN I was a child, I had not 
only to learn the Ten Com- 
mandments, but also what were called 
Scripture proofs for each of them. 
These proofs consisted of morsels of 
Scripture wrested from their context, 
which supported in their fragmentary 
form the contention of each particular 
commandment. I remember satisfying 
my infant sense of the injustice of this 
proceeding by making out a set of 
commandments each of which was the 
direct contradictory of the orthodox 
edition, and finding for each of these 
new commandments a number of 
Scripture proofs. For instance, I re- 
member these: 

103 



UNORTHODOX INTERPRETATIONS 

6. Thou Shalt kill. 1 Kings 18 : 40; 
1 Samuel 15 : 3; Psahn 137 : 9. 

7. Thou shalt commit adultery. 
Genesis 29; Judges 5 : 30. 

8. Thou shalt steal. Exodus 12 : 36; 
Genesis 27 : 24. 

I never dared show this revised list 
to any one, but derived much inward 
satisfaction from it. As I have grown 
older, I have been settled in the opin- 
ion that most theological arguments 
have been on a like uncomfortably re- 
versible basis, and that most heretics 
have had more truth upon their side 
than it was safe for them to have with- 
out a corresponding sense of humor. 
When as a boy, I quoted to one of my 
near relatives the text, "He that sit- 
teth in the heavens shall laugh," as a 
justification of my behavior on Sab- 
bath afternoon, he professed to be 

104 



UNORTHODOX INTERPRETATIONS 

shocked beyond measure, and told me 
that my soul was in jeopardy, and 
"One, who even your irreligious nature 
must confess is the greatest authority 
in the world, has said, referring to the 
worth of one's soul, 'AH that a man 
hath will he give for his life,' " whereat 
I shocked him still more by getting 
him to look up Job 2 : 4 and see who it 
was he considered "the greatest au- 
thority." Samuel Butler gives this ad- 
vice to the young: "Do not be too 
much carried away by the Bible. Re- 
member it presents only one side of the 
case. All the books were written by 
God." There is something to be said for 
this position, as the negro preacher said, 
after quoting to his congregation some 
terrible verses about the torments of the 
damned, "Brethren, I am not respon- 
sible for the composure of this book," 

105 



UNORTHODOX INTERPRETATIONS 

On the other hand, I sometimes still 
Uke to dream that, supposing the book 
was not all written by God, but by 
hard-headed and wise men and women, 
perhaps there is more common sense 
and less mystery-only-to-be-interpret- 
ed-by-one-who-has-our-diploma in it 
than is generally supposed. 

I heard a fool preach a sermon last 
summer upon the needless expense of 
educating ministers. He said all that 
was needed to become a soul-searching 
preacher was a common-sense reading 
of the Bible and some experience. 
** After all," he said, "the most effec- 
tive sermon in its results which we read 
of in the New Testament was preached 
by a rooster, and all he said was ' Cock- 
a-doodle-doo.'" Without going just as 
far as this rooster, yet there is a great 
deal to be said for consulting common 

106 



UNORTHODOX INTERPRETATIONS 

sense rather than what generally passes 
as scholarship in the interpretation of 
the Bible. 

I was greatly struck with this truth 
one Sunday upon coming out of a 
church where a most "scholarly" ser- 
mon had been delivered upon the cast- 
ing of the evil spirit out of the Gada- 
rene demoniac and the subsequent 
disaster to the swine. The Higher Criti- 
cism had had its innings, and the con- 
gregation was dismissed to think over 
the results, if any, by themselves. On 
the way out an old farmer said to me a 
word more illuminating as to the spirit 
of the whole passage than all the ser- 
mon had been. He said he ''guessed 
the thoughts in the hearts of some fel- 
lers would make even a herd of pigs 
that shamed that they would drown 
themselves." Now that is what I mean 
107 



UNORTHODOX INTERPRETATIONS 

by a genuine unorthodox interpreta- 
tion of the Scriptures. So, too, was that 
of the farmer's wife who at the cele- 
bration of the thirtieth anniversary of 
her marriage told me that her favorite 
passage of Scripture was that telling 
about the marriage at Cana of Galilee, 
and, upon my asking her the feelings 
that led to this preference, said : Well, 
how the Lord did it at that marriage 
she could not propose to say, nor how 
he had done it at her own marriage. 
But that he had done it, she knew, for 

— and here she looked lovingly at her 
husband who was standing beside her 

— for the Lord had turned the waters 
of life into wine for her that day. 

There is, of course, a good deal of 
mental fumbling about these common- 
sense, unorthodox interpretations of 
the Bible, but it is my belief that the 

108 



UNORTHODOX INTERPRETATIONS 

sense in which the narratives are un- 
derstood by the great majority of hum- 
ble, unsophisticated readers is quite 
satisfactorily unorthodox. The liberal 
school are apt to set up what is almost 
a straw man, the person who holds 
every word and phrase in a literal man- 
ner, and believe, because this form is 
the only form in which the faith of 
hosts of ordinary folk has been in- 
tellectualized, that therefore it is the 
practical method of their interpreta- 
tion. Formally they believe many such 
things about the Bible because they 
have been so taught, but practically 
they interpret the Bible in a way 
that does credit, I generally fmd, both 
to their head and their heart. This, 
of course, does not refer to Bible-class 
interpretations, which are naturally 
dictated by the dogmas of the society 
109 



UNORTHODOX INTERPRETATIONS 

which supports the Bible class, but it 
does refer to the interpretations of 
humble lovers of the book as they read 
it for their own use, and as they speak 
of them only to close and confidential 
friends. 

"The baskets! The baskets!" said 
one thoughtful old lady, looking up 
from her Bible one afternoon. "Where 
in that desert place did the twelve bas- 
kets come from to fill with fragments? 
I think I know," she said after a pause, 
with a quiet smile — "I think I know. 
I think every family in the crowd had 
done just what the disciples had done, 
and had brought a basket full of provi- 
sions for their day's outing. Each fam- 
ily was so selfish that it was hiding its 
lunch under togas and beneath shawls, 
lest there would not be enough to go 
round if they began to divide it. Every 

110 



UNORTHODOX INTERPRETATIONS 

one was afraid that, if he shared his 
lunch with his neighbor, there would 
not be enough left for himself. Later 
they meant to retire when unnoticed, 
and devour it in secret. But Jesus 
broke down that selfishness effectively 
by suddenly calling openly for the little 
lunch which he and his disciples had 
with them. In spite of sly signs and 
hints and whispered protests on the 
part of these companions of his, it had 
to be produced. Then he began simply 
to distribute it to the multitude, as if 
there had been more than enough for 
everybody. He did it as if it was the 
most natural thing in the world to give 
away what little he had. I can see the 
eyes of the crowd as they strained for- 
ward to see what the Master was doing 
now. Lo! he was distributing in the 
most generous and open-handed way 
111 



UNORTHODOX UsTTERPRETATION^ 

his own little store to the multitude. 
This could not be allowed to go on; the 
Master himself must not be allowed to 
go hungry; and all over the crowd, at 
first shamefacedly, later with more and 
more freedom, from men's pockets, 
from under women's shawls, from be- 
hind bushes and heaps of stones, the 
baskets began to appear, big and little, 
which had been hurriedly put together 
on the start from home. Now Jesus had 
given away to those directly around 
him all his own little store, and now 
one after another was rising from vari- 
ous parts of the crowd and bringing up 
to the Master baskets and loaves and 
fishes and packets of food. They offered 
these to him for himself, but, instead of 
taking them himself, he took them also 
out of the hands of the donors and be- 
gan to pass them around among the 

112 



UNORTHODOX INTERPRETATIONS 

multitude. More and more food was 
discovered and passed around till at 
last these people, who had at first been 
so selfish and secretive, found to their 
astonishment that, when they all be- 
came generous with their store, there 
had been among them all the time far 
more than enough to satisfy the hunger 
of every one present. Then the Master, 
with one of those little touches of care 
and reverence for all God's gifts which 
characterize his life and teaching, com- 
manded that the fragments of his first 
love-feast should be picked up and 
placed in the baskets which were now 
strewn empty around. That is what 
the Lord of Life can do." 

Now I am sure that this interpreta- 
tion of the feeding of the five thousand 
will not appeal so generally to any of 
us as the orthodox miracle-interpreta- 
113 



UNORTHODOX INTERPRETATIONS 

tion, because the lesson of the latter 
way of looking at it is that we should 
expect miracles (which we are all lazy 
enough to enjoy expecting), whereas 
the social lessons of this old lady's un- 
orthodox explanation are awkward, not 
to say inconvenient. 



THE HAPPINESS OF BEING 
GROWN UP 

THERE are so many things to be 
thankful for. It never struck me 
until I was buymg my new pair of 
shoes for two dollars more than I paid 
six months ago, how thankful I should 
be that I was not a centipede. 

In the same way it was when passing 
"the house where I was born" that it 
suddenly flashed upon me how thank- 
ful I should be that I was grown up. I 
sat for years dangling feet that would 
not touch the floor and wishing I was 
grown up. I stood for years at the nur- 
sery window watching my father om- 
nipotently leave the house and go down 
the street and turn the corner at last 
which led to the great, free world of 

115 



THE HAPPINESS OF BEING GROWN UP 

fairyland. My gods for many a year 
were men of thirty and forty, and my 
ideals boys of seventeen and eighteen. 
Now I am a god myself, but somehow 
it does not seem as nice as I thought it 
was going to be. I can rise up at this 
present moment and go down the 
street beneath the admiring gaze of an- 
other nursery window and turn at last 
the street corner that leads to the big, 
free world, but there is no romantic 
thrill at that corner now; around it 
there are just more streets and more 
houses. I am at perfect liberty not to 
eat my oatmeal at breakfast, but in- 
stead to steal down the street to that 
tempting store and buy candy; but the 
sense of this freedom does not intoxi- 
cate as once it would have done. 

Yet, as I say, just as I was passing 
"the house where I was born," it all 
116 



THE HAPPINESS OF BEING GROWN UP 

came back to me how thankful I should 
be that I was grown up. Suddenly I got 
over all this cant about wishing I was 
a child again, and about childhood as 
being the happiest time in one's life. 
Suddenly I felt that at last I had grown 
to man's estate, that I had at last a 
chance to be "very proud and great, 
and tell the other girls and boys not to 
meddle with my toys." 

It was glorious. I wanted to stop 
that anxious-looking man who was 
passing and tell him to cheer up, that I 
had just discovered that we had grown 
up, that there was no one to prevent us 
from skipping school that afternoon 
and going to the ball game. 

But a second look, a second thought, 
convinced me that we had all lost it; 
we have all lost the sense of the happi- 
ness of being grown up. We look at the 

117 



THE HAPPINESS OF BEING GROWN UP 

past sentimentally, at the present dis- 
contentedly, at the future anxiously. 

Childhood? Who would be a child 
again? So would not I. Poetry is all 
very well, but it is in the poet's imag- 
ination. What are the three greatest 
factors in the life of the child? Agoniz- 
ing, inarticulate, misunderstood colic 
— everlasting, irritating, ''Don't do 
thats" — burning envy and admira- 
tion of the freedom of grown-ups. The 
three agonies of childhood you and I 
do not, of course, remember when we 
long in verse for infancy again, but ask 
any six-months-old child and he will 
not deny that my analysis is correct. 

Let us rejoice, therefore, fellow 
grown-ups! We are what we dreamed 
one day we might be. Misunderstood 
colic is of the past. We now say 
"Don't do that" to other little people. 
118 



THE HAPPINESS OF BEING GROWN UP 

We are the spankers and no longer the 
spankees. 

In conclusion, if we dive into the 
depths of this profound subject we 
shall arrive at this valuable truth, that 
only people who keep their child-heart 
continue to appreciate right through 
life the happiness of being grown up. 
We have analyzed this forgotten dark 
side of childhood, but there is a glory 
in childhood which has been best ex- 
pressed by Meredith in this phrase, 
"The rapture of the forward view." 
You only appreciate this side of hap- 
piness when you feel that your feet do 
not quite touch the floor yet, when you 
keep on looking forward to being more 
grown up than you are at present, 
when you still have your gods among 
living men and women. The rapture of 
looking forward to greater powers of 

119 



THE HAPPINESS OF BEING GROWN UP 

self-expression, to greater freedom of 
personality, to greater maturity in the 
spiritual life, this is the joy of those of 
us who are incurable children. 

The greatest happiness of being 
grown up is the happiness of finding 
one's self still a child. 



THE WORLD, THE FLESH, 
AND THE DEVIL 

AS soon as a baby soul is born a 
deadly plot is laid against its 
life. There are always three partners 
in this fell conspiracy: the World, the 
Flesh, and the Devil. Tricked up in gor- 
geous disguises, in the hopes of being 
mistaken for the three Wise Men of the 
first Christmas, they come to present 
their gifts at the baby's cradle. 

The World bears a bank-book, with 
a first deposit for the new-born babe; 
the Flesh brings a silver spoon; while 
the Devil smilingly presents a pretty 
little looking-glass for the darling child. 
But, unlike the genuine Wise Men, they 
do not forthwith leave the baby, but 

121 



THE WORLD, THE FLESH, THE DEVIL 

remain with him till his last day, the 
World waiting without at the door, the 
Flesh continually dancing attendance 
upon him within the house, while the 
Devil depreciates and insinuates him- 
self, till, at last, he creeps right into the 
baby's eyes. 

In this way the fight begins between 
the principalities and powers and the 
soul of a child. For a while the Flesh 
has full sway, standing with finger at 
lip at the nursery door lest the baby's 
slumbers may be disturbed, toiling at 
midnight over bottles and brews that 
the baby's appetite may be tempted. 
The World stands at the door, hand- 
ing in presents of gorgeous clothes that 
the baby may feel himself better than 
other babies; while the Devil contents 
himself with making his presence 
within the child evident by vocal exer- 

122 



THE WORLD, THE FLESH, THE DEVIL 

cises at midnight, in the silence of 
men's sleep-time. 

A few years pass, and the World 
now stands at the door in the shape of 
the neighbor's boy, Johnnie, to tempt 
the little angel soul, forgetful of the 
lofty lessons which he has learned at 
his mother's and over his father's knee, 
to tempt him away to steal cherries or 
throw stones at the local cat. Within 
the home the Flesh slyly leaves the 
pantry door open at all odd moments, 
with visions of pie and doughnuts 
within, and his favorite constitutional 
is straight to the nearest candy store 
and back. The Devil lies low, knowing 
his time is coming, and merely sug- 
gests the kicking of furniture and a 
general programme of destructive hate- 
fulness. 

In the next scene, only a few years 

123 



THE WORLD, THE FLESH, THE DEVIL 

later, the World, the Flesh, and the 
Devil all have left the house, and stand 
with the group of boys telling stories 
in the dark corner of the street. The 
World says, ''Don't be queer! Be like 
other fellows!" The Flesh says, "This 
is life!" The Devil adds, with a wink, 
"Don't tell!" 

In a year or so the boy leaves home 
to seek his fortune in the wide, wide 
world. The Devil has gone before, so as 
to be able to welcome him when he ar- 
rives as a stranger at the great city. 
The World goes with him to help him 
to rid himseK of his apron-string ways 
and help him to be a man among men. 
The Flesh throws the candy and child- 
ishness away, and smiles and nods con- 
fidentially at the Devil when he comes 
to meet the party at the great city. 

So that evening the boy, in his lodg- 
124 



THE WORLD, THE FLESH, THE DEVIL 

ings, sits down to think. The World sits 
beside him, and says: "Your father 
and mother and that home crowd were 
too narrow and strict. Be a man of the 
world. Every one lies a little and steals 
a little, and does a few things on the 
sly. Don't live in a hole; live in the 
world!" Then the boy, looking at the 
World, says to him, "If I go with you, 
where will you bring me?" 

The World lifts the curtain of the 
future, and the boy sees great office 
buildings and fine houses and automo- 
biles and honor and the plaudits of the 
crowd. Then suddenly and nervously 
the World drops the curtain and looks 
round at the boy quickly, saying, 
"That is where I will bring you if you 
will come with me." And the boy is 
tempted sorely, for he wants to suc- 
ceed, and he sits thinking deeply, for it 
125 



THE WORLD, THE FLESH, THE DEVIL 

is for just such things he has come to 
the great city — to get on. 

As he sits thinking, he thinks he 
hears his father's voice in his heart; 
yes, he hears it clearly and distinctly, 
his father's voice, yet in his own heart, 
and it says, "Why did the World drop 
the curtain so nervously and so sud- 
denly?" His father's voice says this 
over several times — "Why was it 
dropped so suddenly?" — till the boy, 
rising up quickly and bending forward 
before the World can intervene, pulls 
aside the curtain again and sees what 
comes after those things which the 
World has showed him — despair and 
anguish and shame, and a little pile of 
dust and ashes. 

Then the boy turns to the World and 
says, "No, I will not go with you 
whither you would lead me, but I will 
126 



THE WORLD, THE FLESH, THE DEVIL 

bring you where I am going." With 
that he lays hold of the World and 
seizes him, and the World falls down 
upon his knees before him, saying, 
*' Master, I will go wheresoever thou 
dost lead me." 

Next the Flesh comes in and speaks 
to him in whispers of the glory of the 
body, of love, of the sweet influence of 
wine and soft joys of ease after the 
feast. A drowsy perfume fills the room 
as he speaks, and soft music and sweet 
voices are heard, alluring beyond 
words. He feels himself beginning to 
slip down and drift away upon the 
sweetest voyage of the world. Sud- 
denly, somewhere in memory, a door 
is opened swiftly and closed again. But 
through it he hears in the moment the 
voice of his mother, singing; It is dif- 
ferent music from that he had thought 
127 



THE WORLD, THE FLESH, THE DEVIL 

SO sweet a moment before; somehow 
now all the other music seems jarred 
and jangled and out of tune. A stench 
as of unwashed bodies innumerable 
comes up into his nostrils; he draws 
himself up, and, seizing Flesh by the 
throat, he points out to him the direc- 
tion in which the stream is flowing, 
saying, "See whither thou wast bring- 
ing me ! " And they both look down and 
see that the river drains immediately 
into a stagnant and putrid marsh of 
loathsome aspect. 

"No," he says to Flesh, "I will not 
go whither thou wouldest have brought 
me, but thou must help me along the 
road whither I am going." Then Flesh 
bows his head before him, and he 
brands Flesh upon the forehead with 
the mark of life. Hardly has he done so 
when the Devil appears in the room, 
128 



THE WORLD, THE FLESH, THE DEVIL 

saying, with a sneer: "Whither art 
thou going? Dost thou know thyself 
whither thou art going? The end of the 
World is dust and ashes, the end of the 
Flesh is disease and death; thou art 
going there, anyway; why not go with 
good companions along, instead of in 
lonely toil and thankless duty?" 

Then the young man sinks down 
upon his chair dejected, and the tears 
come into his eyes as he thinks: "How 
do I know, anyway? Whither am I 
going? I know not! Alas, I know not!" 
The Devil smiles, and utters again 
words of doubt and adds counsels of 
imperfection. At last he says: "No one 
knows! Why give up the real for a 
dream? Come with me; you will then, 
at least, have to-day, the glorious 
to-day!" 

But the World and the Flesh have 
129 



THE WORLD, THE FLESH, THE DEVIL 

seen the young man's perilous state as 
he is tempted of the Devil, and being 
now faithful servants of the young man 
they have gone out in search of help 
for him. Just at the critical moment, 
when he is about to despair and yield 
to the Evil One, they return, and the 
World brings with him a noble friend 
or two, who rally round the lonely 
young man, and encourage him and 
give him strength of soul in his 
struggle, while the Flesh brings sev- 
eral angels — Rest, Refreshment, Vital 
Force, and others — who minister unto 
hun. 

So, at last, refreshed in body and 
cheered by companionship, he looks up 
to have his last fight out with the Devil, 
but finds the Devil has disappeared 
and is nowhere to be seen. Then the 
young man goes out arm in arm with 
130 



THE WORLD, THE FLESH, THE DEVIL 

the World and the Body, they sup- 
porting and helping him, and he lead- 
ing them on to undreamed heights of 
happiness and glory. 



TWO KINDS OF CHRISTMAS 

A PAGAN CHRISTMAS 

SOME people say that Christmas 
is just a pagan festival, with a 
Christian name added to it. They say 
it is the historic development of the 
heathen orgies of the Saturnalia, and 
that it has been kept up in Christen- 
dom all through the years with the 
added name of Christ tacked on to it. 
Now if it gives any people any satis- 
faction so to believe, Scrooge-like, it 
does us very little harm. Yet it is true 
that in America to-day there are the 
two types of people, those who keep 
Christmas in a pagan manner and 
those who keep it in a Christian man- 
ner. Some people celebrate the Satur- 

132 



TWO KINDS OF CHRISTMAS 

nalia. Some people celebrate the birth 
of Jesus. 

The following are the directions for 
keeping it as a pagan festival: About 
a week before Christmas think of the 
people who gave you presents last year 
and who will probably expect some- 
thing from you this year. Then declare 
in their presence a few times that you 
feel so poor this year that you do not 
see how you can give any presents at all. 

As soon as the department stores are 
crowded to overflowing, go down to 
the city and join the rush. Discover 
that everybody is so selfish in a crowd, 
and that you ''never saw such rude 
people, the way they push and crowd 
and try to get served first." Go in the 
evening if you possibly can and tell the 
salesgirl what you think of her for her 
delay in getting you the change of your 

133 



TWO KINDS OF CHRISTMAS 

dollar bill after your ninety-eight-cent 
purchase. 

Choose the things that are cheapest. 
You cannot be expected to know how 
long the salesgirl has already been 
upon her feet that week, nor how late 
the messenger boys have to work de- 
livering parcels at night, nor how much 
the people could have been paid for 
making the goods you buy so cheaply. 
Besides they are presents, and it does 
not matter so much how they wear; it 
is not as if they were for yourself. 

Work hard in this way for three or 
four days, making sure to buy for each 
person something at least as good as 
that person gave you last year. When 
you get absolutely sick and tired of 
this rush, stay at home a morning and 
take out the store of presents you got 
last Christmas which were of no use to 

134 



TWO KINDS OF CHRISTMAS 

you and which you have kept to give 
away again this Christmas. It is well to 
be sure that you do not send the same 
things back to people who sent them 
to you. 

At the last moment you will remem- 
ber somebody who will be likely to ex- 
pect something from you and whom 
you had almost forgotten. Rush back 
again to town. Remember always to 
buy the same things that every one 
else is buying, the same "Christmas 
books" like this one, that no one was 
ever discovered reading, the same little 
useful bags that will serve as a kind 
of chain-Christmas-present, exchang- 
ing owners annually at Christmas for 
many years, the same useless nothings 
that the recipients add to their store 
of other nothings either to be packed 
away or to be daily dusted. 

135 



TWO KINDS OF CHRISTMAS 

So let the pagan festival be ushered 
in with one half of the country stand- 
ing desperately weary, ready to drop, 
working, selling, being rushed and 
scolded, delivering parcels, and the 
other half angry and dissatisfied. 

On Christmas morning send off any 
stray last presents you may have, to 
those who have sent to you and from 
whom you did not expect anything. 
They will think that you sent them 
before you got theirs and that the de- 
lay was due to the Christmas rush. 
Then unparcel all your own presents, 
exclaim over them, pack them away, 
sweep up the paper and excelsior and 
have the first piece of real enjoyment 
you have had for weeks over a good, 
substantial Christmas dinner. 



136 



1 



TWO KINDS OF CHRISTMAS 
A CHRISTIAN CHRISTMAS 

Take a page in your notebook and 
write above it this sentence, "Love can 
make a little gift excel." All year long 
be noting down in it suggestions of 
things the people you love would like : 
the toy train for the little son of the 
woman who washed for you at your 
summer home; the new graphophone 
record for the neighbor's boy who is 
out at the mining camp for the first 
Christmas. 

Mem. "Martha said to-day she 
would rather have a Persian kitty than 
anything else in the world!" 

Mem. "George was saying this June 
that he had always been wanting a 
complete set of Hawthorne, but that 
somehow he had never gotten round 
to get it." 

137 



TWO KINDS OF CHRISTMA-S 

Mem. July 8. ''Mrs. Francis said, 'I 
think that picture of Jesus and the 
Fishermen is the lovehest of all.'" 

Mem. Aug. 10. ''Jane said that the 
rocker in Mrs. J.'s parlor was the only 
chair she ever sat in that exactly suited 
her," etc., etc. 

All year long be adding to your 
ideas, be planning for other people's 
surprises. Then when Christmas comes 
you will not need to buy a single con- 
ventional, trade - Christmas - present. 
They will all be personal tokens of 
thought. They will all have been 
bought long before the rush begins. 
You will have bought some things in 
small local stores for the good of trade, 
you will have asked for the Consum- 
ers' League Label for the good of the 
work-people, you will have shopped in 
November for the good of the sales- 

138 



TWO KINDS OF CHRISTMAS 

people. Before the first week in Decem- 
ber they will be all ready except those 
upon which you are working yourself. 
Then you have a great time between 
that and Christmas planning all kinds 
of jokes and surprises. 

A millionaire may have dwarf goose- 
berry trees supplied by contract at ten 
dollars apiece from England at every 
plate on his Christmas table, but the 
joke is not half so good as — well, what 
Harry found in his Christmas pie last 
Christmas, which hit his case so well, 
and showed him some one else remem- 
bered his little success, and which has 
added a permanent new word to the 
private vocabulary of the family ever 
since. 

At this time, too, you begin writing 
letters. One to the author of the book 
you have so much enjoyed this fall, 

139 



TWO KINDS OF CHRISTMAS 

asking him not to feel it necessary to 
reply, but telling him all the good it 
did you; one to the invahd who thinks 
herself of no use in the world, telling 
her how much she means to you; one 
perhaps to your doctor or minister 
or your telephone girl, in return for 
kindness, thought, courtesy, inspiration 
during the year. 

On Christmas morning you have 
time to have a Christmas party for the 
birds. You are dumbfounded at the 
number of people who have remem- 
bered you. You begin that very eve- 
ning to write and tell them so. And 
your Christmas dinner is the least of all 
the joys of your happiest Christmas. 

It is not a matter of cost; it is a mat- 
ter of love and thought and planning. 
Too late for this Christmas, is it? Ah, 
but just in time for next. 



OUR HEREDITARY SCARE 

ONE of the first stories we tell our 
children from the Bible is the 
account of how a severe shower of rain 
was fatal to a great company of people. 
We tell them that only a very few peo- 
ple of that district, with some zoolog- 
ical specimens, escaped with their lives 
in an ark from the rain. This story has 
been told to children for generations in 
Sunday-Schools and in the homes upon 
Sunday afternoons. The result is that 
in the minds of practically all Chris- 
tian people there is a hereditary scare. 
Religion and the danger of rain have 
become so subtly connected in their 
minds that strong men have been 
known to refuse to go to church upon 
a wet Sunday. 

141 



OUR HEREDITARY SCARE 

Rain under other circumstances has 
practically no terrors for the modern 
man or woman. But once you couple 
rain with the idea of Sunday or church 
or rehgion, that subtle psychological 
connection takes place in their minds. 
They hardly know why they are 
scared, but they are scared. It is the 
unconscious memory of their early 
Bible stories which is at work. 

Now we can hardly afford to give up 
Noah. This ought to be made plain at 
the very start. Yet matters are critical. 
Cases are common where the appear- 
ance of a cloud upon Sunday morning 
has induced a family seizure and emp- 
tied an entire pew. My suggestion is 
that a petition signed by representa- 
tives of all the churches be sent to the 
President calling for a federal com- 
mission of scientists to analyze speci- 

142 



OUR HEREDITARY SCARE 

mens of "religious rain" (that is, rain 
which falls at or before church serv- 
ices). This analysis will, in all proba- 
bility, result in a report that rain upon 
Sundays and church service nights is 
of precisely the same chemical consti- 
tution as upon theater and concert 
nights. This report will help to dispel 
this popular misconception. 

We ought also to insert in our Sun- 
day-School hymn-books some hymns 
upon Sunday rain which would be 
taught concurrently with the flood 
story and so help also to allay the un- 
conscious dread caused by this tale. 
We cannot afford to give up Noah, as 
we have said. The loss of his ark would 
be a calamity to toymakers and the 
loss of his terrible example would be 
irreparable to the W.C.T.U. But such 
a hymn as this sung upon the same 

143 



OUR HEREDITARY SCARE 

Sunday upon which the flood story is 
told would neutralize any harmful 
effect as well as inculcate some of the 
principles of true "science": 

Sunday rain is good for me, 
Makes me grow, you bet. 

If I keep from out my mind 
The idea of wet. 

The juxtaposition of this song with 
the first knowledge of the flood story 
win, I believe, entirely destroy the 
vicious psychological connection be- 
tween religion and rain which we have 
noted above. 

If these proposals meet with ap- 
proval and are foUowed, wet Sundays 
will soon be red-letter days in all our 
churches, and the point will be taken 
from the old gibe that the Baptists are 
the only Christian church which have 
not been afraid of water. 



LITERATURE AND 
DEMOCRACY 

I DO not know how to define true 
democracy. Looking at it from one 
point of view we can say that the dem- 
ocratic consciousness is that state of 
mind which takes dehght in and has con- 
fidence in people rather than things. 

As for hterature, I am inchned to 
borrow as my definition of it Shelley's 
definition of poetry as being *'the rec- 
ord of the best and happiest moments 
of the best and happiest minds." 

It is a pity that as far as I know there 
is no thoroughly accepted word in the 
English language to express the oppo- 
site of democracy. Probably the best 
word is one which, in spite of Thack- 
eray's use of it in the title of a book of 

145 



LITERATURE AND DEMOCRACY 

real literature, has never fully won rec- 
ognition for itself — the word "snob." 

Now the thesis I should like to pre- 
sent is that the lover of true literature 
can never be a snob, or rather that his 
snobbishness must decrease in propor- 
tion to his understanding love of real 
literature. 

Snobbishness is a disease of the spir- 
itual eyesight which magnifies alto- 
gether out of proportion the insignifi- 
cant qualities which separate people, 
and fails to see the great and beauti- 
ful qualities in which, with the infi- 
nite variety which gives literature its 
chance, all are kin. For the snob, accent 
of speech, quality of clothing, deftness 
to choose the right spoon for the soup, 
ability of avoiding in conversation any 
subject too far from the weather, and, 
above all, the art of smiling in a deep, 
146 



LITERATURE AND DEMOCRACY 

soulful, and understanding manner 
when the proper time comes to ap- 
prove of the symphony or opera or 
lecture of which Boston approves — 
these powers seem to the snob to be of 
infinite value, but the qualities that 
made T Wharf, when the fish smells 
high, or an auction of old clothes in a 
street of! Bowdoin Square, or Shake- 
speare, universal in their human qual- 
ity, are lost upon them. 

What literature wants to show forth 
is the unity that underlies the infinite 
variety of human nature. So it is inter- 
ested in all sorts and conditions of men, 
women, and children. But it will admit 
exclusive superiority to none. 

The aristocrat comes to literature 
and tries to persuade her that the man 
of birth and breeding is the only truly 
interesting and noble character. Chau- 

147 



LITERATURE AND DEMOCRACY 

cer answered that demand in his great 
manner and for all time in the Pro- 
logue to his ** Canterbury Tales." You 
remember after the most carefully 
painted and exquisite of his vignettes 
in that poem, that of the parish priest, 
he adds this: 

"With him ther was a Plowman, was his 
brother. 
That had ylad of dong ful many a fother." 

And I think that English poetry 
ever since has been on the whole true 
to that grand manner of Master Chau- 
cer; it matters not whether a man is 
dealing with the sacred mysteries, or 
high up in the counsel of emperors and 
courts, or loading up dung in a cart; 
it is his humanity that is interesting 
literature. 

So morality has always come to lit- 
erature and tried to persuade her that 
148 



LITERATURE AND DEMOCRACY 

it is only the people morality thought 
good who were worthy of literary set- 
ting; the others should only be used 
sparingly as awful warning. But liter- 
ature has answered that demand with 
Goethe, Montaigne, Nietzsche, and 
Ibsen, and with the general retort that 
those whom we think immoral are 
often a great deal more moral than 
ourselves. Scientists have asserted to 
literature that insanity, for instance, 
in any of its forms was morbid and 
only to be hushed up; literature has 
responded with Don Quixote, Ophelia, 
and the fools of Shakespeare, the mad 
song of Gretchen, Madge Wildfire, and 
Meg Merrilies, and altogether with the 
pertinent retort that those whom we 
think mad are often a great deal more 
acute than we are. 
So various coteries of snobs have 

149 



LITERATURE AND DEMOCRACY 

come to literature and asserted that 
the people of their kind were too sacred 
to be laughed at. Royalists said you 
must n't laugh at kings and the splen- 
dor and sacred majesty of courts and 
princes; literature made answer with 
Gulliver's "Travels" and "Sartor Re- 
sartus," and Shelley and Swinburne. 

Clericals said you must n't laugh at 
the Church; literature responded with 
Jane Austen's curates, and the Rever- 
end Mr. Chadband. Prudes said you 
must n't laugh at our morality and 
ideals of common decency; literature 
responded by inventing George Ber- 
nard Shaw. 

In fact the idea of literature is that 
everything that is human is worth 
study; that in the mire and scum of 
things something always, always sings; 
that nothing worth while ought to be 

150 



LITERATURE AND DEMOCRACY 

afraid of being laughed at; and that the 
thing that everybody is interested in is 
human nature. So that real literature 
is always the expression of democracy, 
and the boy and girl who love poetry 
and imaginative literature must also be 
essentially democratic and come to like 
the people around them from whose 
lives this poetry and imaginative work 
has been distilled. 

As a general rule English literature 
has been true to this democratic ideal, 
though of course some failures from 
that aim are to be discovered. Such is, 
for instance, that frightfully snobbish 
poem of Tennyson's, "Lady Clara 
Vere de Vere." We are to assume, I 
suppose, that this lady had offended 
the youthful poet by not attending 
enough to him. But this can hardly 
justify two of the most impudent lines 

151 



LITERATURE AND DEMOCRACY 

of English poetry, when the youthful 
bard actually gives this gratuitous ad- 
vice to the fair lady: 

"Oh! teach the orphan-boy to read, 
Or teach the orphan-girl to sew — " 

But English poetry has seldom fallen 
so low. 

The antiseptic power of Uterature 
was forcibly brought home to me a 
short time ago by a young man who 
was complaining about the exclusive 
and aristocratic spirit shown by his 
young wife. He said at last with tears 
in his eyes, "Yet I have no one but my- 
self to blame; I ought to have known it 
all the time before I was married — she 
never liked Falstaff'' 

Different people have their own dif- 
ferent summer resorts that they praise 
above any others. I too have mine 
from which one comes back always 
152 



LITERATURE AND DEMOCRACY 

with a greater love for one's fellow- 
men and I hope more democratic of 
soul. It is Keats's little town, by river 
or seashore or mountain, built with 
peaceful citadel, that was emptied of 
its folk that pious morn when Keats in 
the British Museum caught sight of 
the Greek urn. It is the same little city 
so well described by Yeats: 

" Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, 
Where nobody gets old and godly and grave. 
Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue. 
And where kind tongues bring no captivity. 
For we are only true to the far lights 
We follow singing over valley and hill." 

As we wind upward toward that 
temple we follow that mysterious 
priest — I sometimes think he is Chau- 
cer's "povre persoun" of a town, some- 
times I think he is old Dr. Lavendar. 
Above our heads is ever the eternal 
music of Shelley's skylark singing; and 
153 



LITERATURE AND DEMOCRACY 

entering the temple we hear with en- 
raptured ears Abt Vogler extemporiz- 
ing upon an instrument of his inven- 
tion. So we take our places with Sir 
Roger de Coverley and Colonel New- 
come; we see the weather-scarred, tear- 
stained face of the Ancient Mariner 
who kneels with outstretched hands 
before the central altar; and in the 
farther transept yonder the gold sun- 
shine falling upon Lady Esmond's 
head. As I look around that little tem- 
ple (going there as I do after the hard 
winter's work, summer after summer) 
I will confess to you in confidence, on 
condition that it goes no further, those 
whom I see most gladly. I confess I am 
most in love with Thackeray's Beatrix, 
although if it comes to marriage I 
should choose for my wife (I fear it 
is hopelessly sentimental) Esther in 

154 



LITERATURE AND DEMOCRACY 

** Bleak House," or Candida, and for 
my sister Jeannie Deans, and if Heaven 
ever blessed me with a daughter I 
should choose Cordeha, and for my 
mother I have long ago taken her of 
whom John Donne wrote those won- 
drous lines: 

"Nor Spring nor Summer beauty hath such 
grace 
As I have seen in one autumnal face." 

And when the long procession of 
holy fathers two and two, so well de- 
scribed by Scott in the "Lay of the 
Last Minstrel," has passed along the 
aisle, my eye strays away through the 
window down to the little town lying 
below, where we sometimes upon the 
city common are called to battle by 
the splendid imagery of Milton's devil 
or the glorious power of Bunyan's 
ApoUyon, for there are no other two 
155 



LITERATURE AND DEMOCRACY 

generals in the city of literature under 
whom one would more gladly fight. 
And at last I see the little Mermaid 
Tavern in one of the streets where, 
when the service is over, we shall go 
and listen to Johnson or talk to R. L. S., 
and where I promise you I shall get 
drunk in nobody's company but Fal- 
staff's only. 



THE GREAT JOY OF GETTING 
HOME AGAIN 

ABOUT the middle of August 
we all begin to feel we need 
a change. The rustic cabin chairs of 
birchwood, that looked so charmingly 
mountainy in the beginning of July, 
begin now to hurt the back and become 
uncomfortable; and we remember, 
with longing, that deep, soft Morris 
chair in our living-room at home. The 
music of the sad sea waves or of the 
wind among the pine trees sounds more 
and more monotonous to us as we hear 
with spiritual ears the roar of Washing- 
ton Street traffic or of Broadway, or 
even the less human sounds of the Fri- 
day afternoon Symphony. Most of all, 
as we long to get back to town, it is the 

157 



THE JOY OF GETTING HOME AGAIN 

vision of fresh vegetables and eggs and 
butter that attracts us. There is an 
old superstition to the effect that the 
country is the source of these good 
things; that the hen and the cow and 
the soil are connected in some obscure 
way with all these delights. Experience 
has proved to city folks how false this 
idea has been. The source of eggs, but- 
ter, and fresh vegetables is Chicago; 
and, the nearer we get to that center or 
to some other such metropolis, the bet- 
ter they will be. Up in New Hampshire 
we have smiled as our friends at our 
piazza luncheon have praised these 
delicacies of the country, exclaiming 
over them as triumphs of rural life, 
knowing, as we did, that these had all 
come up on the same train as they, 
from Boston. Our friends at Gloucester 
have been writing us in transports of 

158 



THE JOY OF GETTING HOME AGAIN 

delight over the fresh fish they are get- 
ting now from an address we gave 
them of a most rehable Chicago firm. 
Soon, we dream in the middle of Au- 
gust, we shall be back with our own 
reliable city milk that has no barn or 
cabbage or turnip in it. Soon we shall 
be able to buy eggs that have not been 
cooked by the long journey from the 
city in the heat of the day up to the 
jumping-off place, which is our sum- 
mer home. We have been searching for 
eggs all day up here in New Hampshire, 
and have been met with the blankest 
faces at farmhouse after farmhouse. 
''Could you tell us where we could get 
some fresh eggs? " we asked. Invariably 
we have been met with astonishment. 
We were by that very question judged 
as city folk who thought they could get 
anything they wanted anywhere. "No, 
159 



THE JOY OF GETTING HOME AGAIN 

I could not say where you might be 
getting 'eggs,'" was the answer regu- 
larly. We saw hens at one farmhouse, 
but found they were kept as pets 
only. 

It is because we really are *'city 
folk," and need asphalt and electric 
arc-lamps and dust and eggs and such 
city comforts, that we all fly back 
about this time of the year. We like to 
play we are a part of nature, but you 
have only to see Mrs. Smith when to- 
day she thought that a grasshopper 
was up her skirt, you have only to see 
the piazza luncheon party when a dead 
beetle is found at the bottom of the 
teacup, to be convinced we are only 
playing at being nature folk: we really 
are fit only to walk about on con- 
crete, rubbered, umbrellaed, and water- 
proofed, with a policeman around to 
160 



THE JOY OF GETTING HOME AGAIN 

keep us from being run over at cross- 
ings. We are parasites of steam heat 
and concrete and cushions. We have 
no kinship with the real farmers, who 
view with astonishment our desire for 
eggs in August. We are all second cous- 
ins to the New York lady who viewed 
through her lorgnette for a few mo- 
ments Millet's picture of '*The Sower," 
and then said to her companion, "I do 
not care for pictures of persons of that 
class." We are not of that class. Mos- 
quitoes sting us, fertilizer smells to us, 
slivers get into our hands, and we wake 
up about eight o'clock in the morning. 
No, let us return to our superheated, 
ill-ventilated houses in our hordes, let 
us talk about Strauss and the Cubists 
at our afternoon teas, while the farmers 
of New England, glad to be rid of the 
intruders, sit down on their piazzas to 
161 



THE JOY OF GETTING HOME AGAIN 

enjoy the best time of all the year — 
October. They do not rave about fresh 
eggs or garden vegetables, but are hun- 
gry enough to eat what comes their 
way because they have never known 
the tastes of the town. They do not spy 
at the birds through ridiculous glasses 
and look up their names in books, or 
walk hot and weary miles to see views, 
or lose golf -balls in the long grasses of 
the meadows. They work at their little 
farms and make what they can. They 
do not know the names of the flowers 
or the birds or the mountain-peaks, but 
they know them. They do not go out 
to see sunsets, but the calm of the sun- 
set, as they see it with the corner of 
their eyes, fills their souls; and their 
children after them will remember the 
lane at the back of the house that leads 
to the pasture, long after some rich 

162 



THE JOY OF GETTING HOME AGAIN 

man has bought it and leveled it, and 
employed two men, with lawn-mowers, 
upon it weekly during the summer 
months. 



WHAT I WOULD NOT 
THAT I DO 

THE dogs met one day to re- 
consider their historic attitude 
toward cats. 

The old dog, who was chairman of 
the meeting, rose and said that he was 
sure they had all come to feel that their 
attitude toward cats was the one great 
blemish upon their noble racial charac- 
teristics. It was both cruel and un- 
dignified so to harry and persecute the 
most insignificant and helpless of crea- 
tures. He was sure that he expressed 
the mind of the meeting when he said 
that this custom should be entirely 
done away with. The chairman's 
speech was greeted with great ap- 
plause. Dog after dog arose and spoke 

164 



WHAT I WOULD NOT THAT I DO 

along similar lines. The feeling was 
absolutely unanimous that this bar- 
barous custom of pursuing cats must 
be entirely given up. At last one dig- 
nified animal rose and said that this 
moment was a great one in the history 
of their race and he thought that the 
conclusion to which they had come 
should be made permanent in some 
solemn form. He proposed that every 
one should stand up and solemnly 
raising the right paw, pledge himself 
never to pursue a cat again. This was 
unanimously agreed to. 

As they were thus standing, a cat in 
a near-by tree thought it an opportune 
moment to descend and return home. 
Unfortunately, in jumping from the 
tree, she made a slight noise upon the 
fallen leaves. The chairman of the 
meeting, who was standing with his 

165 



WHAT I WOULD NOT THAT I DO 

paw raised putting the vote, caught 
sight of her, and in a moment there was 
not a dog to be seen in the place and 
the cat had the narrowest escape of her 
Ufe. 



I 



LIES 

I LIKE to nail them on the counter 
as the old storekeepers used to nail 
false coin down as a warning to all 
comers. They are blue lies, and they 
sometimes deceive even the elect. 

The first is this: Every one is in it for 
what he can get out of it, I have often 
thought it. You have often almost said 
it. Most cheerfully I hereby pubhcly 
proclaim it a lie. 

As I travel by night in one of those 
vehicles, called for some unknown rea- 
son a "sleeper," I sometimes vary the 
monotony by pulling up the shade and 
looking out. I see lights, and every 
light is the witness to me of some one 
who is not in it only for what he can 
get out of it. There is no known method 

167 



LIES 

of supervising men who are in it only 
for what they can get out of it. I see 
the red and white and green Ughts 
along the track, and each means some 
absolutely unsupervisible soul awake 
at the post of duty guarding the lives 
of his fellows. In a flash I pass the fire- 
station in a town by the tracks, and the 
light there is the light of souls ready at 
any time to give up their lives for the 
pride they have in the fact that no fire- 
man ever fails in his duty. I pass the 
lights of a great hospital upon the hill, 
and know the nurses and doctors there 
are inspired by no hope of large profits 
from their profession, but for the pride 
that they have been worthy members 
of a brotherhood and sisterhood loyal 
to the duty of heart and skill. When as 
the gray morning dawns I begin to see 
laborers and humble men of business 

168 



LIES 

hurrying toward their daily work, I am 
glad that the thing most of them think 
of most is not the gain but the glory, the 
satisfaction of doing a day's work ac- 
curately and conscientiously and well. 
The truth is: Nearly every one is in it 
for his loyalty to duty. 

The second lie is this: You have to 
give the public what it wants. The public 
does not want literature, it wants best- 
sellers; it does not want worship, it 
wants vaudeville; it does not want to 
think, it wants to have its prejudices 
tickled; it does not want to feel, it 
wants to be made a fool of; it does not 
want inspiration, it wants flattery. You 
must give the public what it wants. 

I am glad to say it is a lie. If you do 
give the pubhc what it wants, the pub- 
lic ends by despising you; but if you 
give the public your best, the public 

169 



LIES 

ends by trying to worship you. The 
architect who gave the public of 
twenty years ago what it wanted is 
trying now with all his might to be 
reborn as a yeggman with a stick of 
dynamite, that he may remove from 
the earth some traces of his shame. 

But, thanks be to God, there are ten 
thousand preachers and architects and 
painters and writers who refuse to give 
the public what it wants. There are 
stained-glass makers who are not mil- 
Uonaires and yet refuse thousands of- 
fered them for making oiled illustra- 
tions instead of stained-glass windows. 
There is at least one architect who will 
not design for you a building he knows 
to be wrong. There are some writers 
who will not descend to slobber and 
slush, though they could make money 
by the slide-down. The result is per- 
170 



LIES 

haps that they are white-haired and 
have been poor. But what of it? They 
are the salt of the earth who have 
learned the secret truth: The pubhc 
demands of you your best. 

The third lie is this : You must defend 
God against the truth, God, morality, 
and religion all exist because we want 
to believe in them. That is as far as it 
is "reverent" to go. To present a mi- 
croscope or a telescope or spectroscope 
at God is unbelief. It is pious to believe 
as we believe and very wicked to try 
and throw the light of reason around 
that belief. Believe, but never ask why. 
The Devil's name is "Why?" Simply 
believe. 

It is a great relief to know that all 
this is a lie. It all amounts to this: If 
I begin to think and investigate, it 
may prove not to be so, therefore I 

171 



LIES 

shall consider it wrong to do so. Sup- 
pose investigations proved that the 
text on which my hope for eternal 
salvation rests was a mistranslation, 
where would I be? Supposing scientific 
experiment proved conclusively that 
there is no life hereafter, what would 
become of our hymn-books? Suppos- 
ing life can be produced in our lab- 
oratories, what would happen to poor 
God? Therefore, all search for truth in 
regions where the present views are 
necessary to our comfort is taboo, ir- 
reverent, irreligious, rationalistic, god- 
less. 

But eternal glory be to the man of 
scientific mind which follows truth 
even if it damn him. That is what they 
called in the Middle Ages the unmer- 
cenary love of God. As W. L. Sperry 
has recently pointed out, the old queer 

172 



LIES 

question of those saints of the Middle 
Ages, "Could I love God even if he 
damned me?" is a very real and very 
modern question to-day. The scien- 
tific mind answers it triumphantly with 
a "Yes." Whether these investigations 
destroy my most cherished hopes or 
not, I will follow them out. I will fol- 
low nothing but the truth. The phrase 
used by an ancient Greek thinker in a 
controversial work on philosophy, "The 
following considerations will be of value 
to my opponents," as he hsted the diffi- 
culties he had met in supporting his 
own hypothesis, that phrase is the es- 
sence of the scientific spirit, which is 
also the spirit of all true religion : — loy- 
alty to the truth. The greatest rever- 
ence we can show to God in such mat- 
ters is to let him look after himself. 
The Devil says, "Does Job serve 
173 



LIES 

God for naught?" The answer is in the 
afTirmative. Job at his post of duty, 
Job at his lonely easel, Job at his mi- 
croscope, serves God for naught but 
the joy of serving him. 

If all this seems too optimistic to 
you, if you feel that there are too many 
clock-watchers, shirkers, mere time- 
servers among the world's workers and 
artists and scientists to-day, remember 
the only way you can improve matters 
is not by scolding about it, but by being 
the other kind yourself. 



THE BEST JOKE 

WPIAT is the best joke you ever 
heard? Well, you know you 
cannot retell jokes. Jokes have to hap- 
pen. Then they are funny. But when 
you go to work to tell some one else 
about them, they seem to lose their 
comic flavor. I remember hearing a girl 
say that the funniest thing she ever saw 
was when her kitty ran off with the 
baby's doll and the baby ran after it. 
Now, between ourselves, there does not 
seem to us to be anything particularly 
funny about that. But, if we had been 
there when it happened, we should 
have laughed as loudly as any one. 

Foreigners tell us that one of the 
things which spoil spontaneous Ameri- 
can humor is the habit of swapping 
175 



THE BEST JOKE 

stories. It is hard to invent and make 
a good, new, real joke, and "stories" 
grow stale so soon. But the new joke 
that comes fresh out of a person's life 
is always the best joke. 

It is the easiest thing in the world to 
make people laugh with their mouths. 
The person who can do it best is a fool. 
It is the hardest thing imaginable to 
make people laugh with their minds 
and souls as well as with their mouths. 
It takes a genius to do that. People as 
a general rule laugh at anything that 
is incongruous. I heard a whole audi- 
ence of people at a stereopticon lecture 
laughing at a fly which was walking 
over one of the slides and so appearing 
on the screen. That was not the place 
they expected to see a fly, and so they 
laughed. 

When the funny man came up to the 

176 



THE BEST JOKE 

gate of heaven, he found the gate was 
not opened as quickly as he expected. 
So he began to tell of all the good jokes 
he had made on earth, and of all the 
times he had made people laugh. Peter 
listened to all he had to say. Then he 
said: 

"Funny men are admitted to heaven 
only on account of the good jokes they 
thought of and did not tell." 

"What do you mean?" said the 
funny man, looking up earnestly for 
once in his life. 

"You have been an after-dinner 
speaker," said Peter sternly. "You 
have committed the unpardonable sin 
of irrelevance. You have dragged in 
the dead bodies of jokes, and as a body- 
snatcher you are condemned. Further- 
more you have economized and stinted 
in the sacred free spirit of humor, mak- 

177 



THE BEST JOKE 

ing notes of second-hand jokes, and 
squeezing out of the garbage of your 
mind foul and bitter drops that have 
shocked the unthinking into sneaking 
laughter. But it would spoil the real 
fun of heaven to let you in." So the 
funny man turned away with a sigh 
to tell his stories elsewhere. 

But what is the best joke that has 
ever been made? The answer is a mat- 
ter of nationality. The Scotchman's 
best joke is canny, while the Irish- 
man's rushes like a bull through both 
language and logic with twinkling so- 
lemnity. England enjoys an assumed 
callousness most of all. German jokes 
are rough; French, risque. America 
loves the laconic dry jest of few words 
mostly imphed. 

The typical American story is that of 
the farmer in the God-forsaken coun- 

178 



THE BEST JOKE 

tryside who was asked by a visitor if 
he had hved there all his life, and an- 
swered: "Not y it!" The typical Irish 
story is of the Irishman who refused 
to let the dentist put his hand in his 
mouth to fix his tooth, he said he was 
afraid the dentist would bite him. The 
typical Scotch story is of the Scotch- 
man who had after going all round the 
railroad carriage in a vain search for a 
loan of a match, " jist had to use one of 
his ain." The typical English story is of 
the resourceful friend who seeing at a 
fire a poor man caught on the topmost 
beam far above the highest ladder, 
threw him up a rope, told him to tie it 
round him and — pulled him down. 

But what is the best joke that has 

ever been made? It is the fact that 

every one thinks his own the best. 

*'Ma, may I have some more 'am?" 

179 



THE BEST JOKE 

says the little cockney girl. "Don't 
say 'am, my dear; say 'am," says the 
mother. And the father, standing by, 
winks at the visitor and says, "They 
both think they're saying "am."' And 
of course the visitor thinks he says 
"ham," and you do and I do. But who 
knows if we do? Perhaps we are both 
saying "'am." We think our own jokes 
best. Perhaps that is the best joke of 
aU. 



THIS IS AS FAR AS YOU GO 

ONCE there was a very fatherly 
and motherly locomotive. It 
used to bring a train of suburbanites 
into the city every morning. It took 
such a personal interest in everybody 
whom it picked up on the way that it 
worried greatly when the time came for 
them to get out. It used to fret and 
fume and wonder why it could not see 
each of its dear passengers safe to his 
oflTice or his business. These children 
might get run over on the street out- 
side the station, these stranger ladies 
would be sure to lose their way, these 
men might miss the electrics and be 
late for work. 

So whenever the poor thing was 
brought to a stop in the South Station 
181 



THIS IS AS FAR AS YOU GO 

it used to wear itself all out bumping 
against the buffer, wishing it could see 
each one of its passengers safe to his 
or her destination. It knew that they 
would never be able to look out for 
themselves. It had taken such care to 
bring them so far, why could n't it get 
off the rails and see them all safe to 
their journey's end? 

One morning, as the locomotive was 
grunting and growling and puffing off 
steam in this nervous condition of af- 
fectionate worry, the station-master 
came up to it and said: "Look here, 
old fellow, you have done very well 
bringing all these passengers safely so 
far on their way, but this is as far as 
YOU go!" 



IN PRAISE OF EVE 

EVE is one of the most pathetic 
figures in history. I cannot help 
f eehng that her sad phght is largely due 
to a misunderstanding. She has been 
held guilty of bringing the knowledge 
of evil into the human race. But that 
is due to a misunderstanding of the 
Hebrew phrase, "To know good and 
evil," which simply is the equivalent 
of our slang phrase, "To know what's 
what," to have the inteUigence of a 
mature man. Few notice in reading the 
story that the prophecies of the serpent 
come true, God's do not. Most people 
have the idea that our first parents 
were put out of the garden because of 
Eve's disobedience, but the story it- 
self states they were excluded because 
183 



IN PRAISE OF EVE 

they had become inteUigent through 
Eve's action, and might now hoodwink 
their jailer further into eating of the 
tree of eternal life. The serpent is em- 
blematic of the spirit which throws out 
suggestions that put responsibility on 
others, and give them trouble, and 
then glides safely away and ironically 
takes no part itself. 

The moral of the tale, then, is that 
the impulse to know, the impulse 
which creates science and civilization, 
is indulged at a great cost. The tale 
tells how mankind left a condition of 
slothful ease for a life of painful strug- 
gle. Every progress in intelligence 
brings with it greater possibilities of 
suffering. The more highly developed a 
man or woman is in mind and heart, 
the more susceptible he or she has be- 
come to pain. Every new and original 
184 



IN PRAISE OF EVE 

step in the progress of the race is made 
in defiance of some old and honored 
law or custom, is made at the risk of 
failure and loss of some fair Eden, and 
brings with it somewhere greater possi- 
bilities of pain. Eve is the adventurous 
soul of the world which, in defiance of 
use and wont, sets out to blaze a new 
trail in the pathless forests which is one 
day to become the highway of the na- 
tions. Eve is the great high priestess of 
all who have dared to know, to follow 
truth at all costs, to investigate and 
understand. Eve declared man is fit for 
better things than keeping a garden: it 
is his to enjoy more than the cow-like 
pleasures of sleep in the garden shad- 
ows in the heat of the day. Better to 
suffer, better to agonize and struggle 
and fail, than to live forever this silly 
life of inglorious ease. So Eve led our 

185 



IN PRAISE OF EVE * 

race forth, and the gates of Eden 
clanged behind her forever. Behind her 
were the cool walks, the pleasant shad- 
ows, the blooming flowers, the healthy 
work, the light and easy sleep of the 
garden, and before her — Ah, if she 
had seen what lay before the race she 
was leading forth, would she ever have 
taken that hasty step? Had she seen 
the battlefields, the treachery, the suf- 
fering, the poverty, the sin and slums 
and corruption of our modern close- 
built cities, would she not have been 
content to have stayed among the 
dreaming shadows tending her flowers? 
We can answer surely. No ! To know, 
to do, to achieve, to take great risks for 
the chances of great and noble victo- 
ries, this is life, she would have cried, 
rather than a thousand years of ease. 
We know she would have answered 
186 



IN PRAISE OF EVE 

thus, for we are all the children of Eve, 
and the voice of her adventurous soul 
is in our souls to-day. If it is a choice 
between ignorant happiness and pain- 
ful acquisition of new knowledge, we 
cast away to-day happiness and health 
and ease to know more, to know the 
truth. All honor to our common 
mother, then; and may our God, who 
is not the arbitrary and revengeful 
deity whom Eve outwitted, but a God 
of truth, of progress, demanding of all 
his children courage and intelligence, 
may he give us some of the power of 
individual choice which is ours by 
hereditary right from Eve our mother! 



THE GRAMMAR OF LIFE 

THE parts of speech once met to- 
gether to discuss which was the 
greatest. The first personal pronoun 
was appointed judge. The nouns, sit- 
ting on their thrones — soUd, substan- 
tial, vast — asserted: "We are the only 
things; everything else is mere idea; we 
are the only reality; we are the great- 
est." 

The adjectives laughed at this, and 
cried in scorn: ''Nay, what are the 
nouns without us? A noun without 
shape or color or size is ridiculous; we 
give quality to reality; we are the 
greatest." 

At which the verbs rushed in, in 
great haste, followed by their attend- 
ants, shouting as they ran around: 

188 



THE GRAMMAR OF LIFE 

"We do things. Nouns are dead. The 
great thing in Ufe is to act. Therefore 
we are the greatest." Their httle fairy 
attendants, who guided all their ac- 
tions, and kept the strenuous, undis- 
ciplined verbs from all kinds of confu- 
sion and violence, merely smiled at this 
and said nothing, for the interjections 
were asserting that they were the only 
parts of speech that could talk, and the 
prepositions and conjunctions (in uni- 
form like little messenger boys) were 
chattering away to the effect that they 
were essential to all business arrange- 
ments and therefore were the greatest. 
After waiting for the confusion to 
subside, the first personal pronoun 
said: "The greatest thing in life is not 
to have things, nor even to have good 
things. It is not to do things, much less 
to talk or diplomatically to arrange 
189 



THE GRAMMAR OF LIFE 

things. The thing of most importance 
in hfe is the way you do things. I there- 
fore call upon the little attendants I 
see with the verbs — the adverbs — to 
receive the prize. God must be served 
by adverbs." 

Then the adverbs came up to be 
crowned as the most important parts 
of speech. The rest of the company at 
first was inclined to be angry, but could 
not remain so long, for the adverbs 
came up and took the prize in such 
a pleasant way, and acted so nicely 
about it afterwards. 



THREE FAMILIAR DEVILS 

THE Devil has been portrayed in 
many ways in the hterature of 
the world. He has the power of appear- 
ing in that form best able to tempt the 
particular weakness of the day and 
generation. 

There are three great pictures of him 
in three great books, in each of which 
he appears in a role very familiar to 
us all. 

The first book is Milton's "Paradise 
Lost." Satan is perhaps the real hero 
of this poem. 

The battle-cry of this devil is, 
"Goodness is weakness; badness is 
strength!" He urges you to enjoy life 
untrammeled by the prudential max- 
ims and the cowardly conscience of the 

191 



THREE FAMILIAR DEVILS 

unco' godly man. The good people are 
the weaklings, he tells you: virtue is 
stale, self-conceited, and ignorant. We 
only are the brave people who take 
the risks and live for the glorious to- 
day. 

This is the devil who tempts in 
youth. Then for a time goodness and 
all the conventionaUties of society and 
the stale and uninteresting things of 
life seem to be upon the one side, and 
the bad and exciting and romantic and 
interesting things upon the other. This 
devil is always most powerful where 
young people are taught that good- 
ness is the preparation to be ready 
for heaven after death. 

When children are taught that their 
type of goodness is to be the same as 
grandmother's, and that they are to 
imitate especially her ways of quiet, 

192 



THREE FAMILIAR DEVILS 

humble meditation, then this devil is 
strong, for he has youthful nature all 
on his side. But where teachers have 
made the children feel that to be good 
is to live the broadest and strongest 
and most fully rounded human life, 
then this devil loses much of his pow- 
er. Here lies our great educational 
problem — How to make the good life 
appear to the children the most excit- 
ing and interesting and romantic life 
they can possibly imagine. 

Yet this devil will always retain some 
of his ancient power, and badness will 
always be able to seem the more glo- 
rious to the young because its brag- 
gadocio is so like manliness, and its 
excitement so like exaltation, and its 
thoughtlessness so like the careless 
generosity of true manhood. 

This is the first devil, the great angel 

193 



THREE FAMILIAR DEVILS 

of darkness, glorious in his seeming 
majesty of rebellion, pouring out his 
scorn upon the safe and tame and easy 
ways of virtue. 

The second devil is the devil of 
Christ's temptation. This devil does 
not at all deny that goodness is a grand 
thing: he believes in it with all his 
heart. He has come merely to explain 
to you that this thing which you had 
considered wrong is in reality quite 
right : it is in fact your plain duty to do 
it. He has his divinity-circuit Bible 
under his arm, from which he quotes 
copiously to you to prove that the 
thing which you want to do more than 
anything else, but which you know 
quite well is wrong for you to do, is 
really right for you to do. He merely 
wishes to help you see your duty more 
plainly. We all know what a fair face 

194 



THREE FAMILIAR DEVILS 

he can put upon every moral issue. He 
is filled with kindly thoughts, with ten- 
der sentiments. He is an expert in the 
ignoble side of virtue. He comes to the 
lazy student and tells him he must not 
overwork and overtask his strength. 
He comes to the miserly man and ad- 
vises him of his duty to provide ade- 
quately for his own old age, and speaks 
feelingly of the sin of becoming a bur- 
den upon others. He whispers to the 
lustful man that self-control is unnat- 
ural and bad for him. He is the kindest, 
most indulgent, most thoughtful friend 
a man can have. He knows the par- 
donable, the frail human side of every 
sin. Yet he is the devil, and the mean- 
est, most degraded man in the world, 
when he comes to himself after yield- 
ing to his suggestions, know she is the 
devil, and despises and hates him. This 
195 



THREE FAMILIAR DEVILS 

is the second devil who comes to prove 
the worse the better reason. 

The third devil is in some ways the 
most devilish of all. He is the devil 
made immortal by Goethe in his 
"Faust." He is the smiling gentleman, 
cultured, keen of intellect, polished in 
his manners, well traveled and well 
read, and a trifle sarcastic. He is a man 
of the world. The idea of any one being 
really innocent makes him shrug his 
shoulders and smile in a good-humored 
way. He simply disbelieves in good- 
ness. He smiles at your ignorance of 
the world in believing that any one 
is acting from disinterested motives. 
Every man has his price, he says: the 
only kind of innocence that exists is 
ignorance. He is best described as being 
pure intellect without appreciation. He 
cannot love or become enthusiastic or 

196 



THREE FAMILIAR DEVILS 

praise : he can see only the weak points. 
This is the devil who tempts us all in 
times of depression. Every one is look- 
ing after his own selfish interests, look 
out for yourself, too : every one is in- 
dulging his worser self upon the sly, 
take your part and get your share. All 
men are knaves : to get on, you must be 
one, too. 

These are the three great devils. The 
first cries defiantly. Right is weak, is 
miserable. The second advances logi- 
cally the proposition, Wrong is right if 
you will only think it over with me. 
The third, with a sly smile, whispers. 
There is no right. 



A TRIP AROUND MY SOUL 

I AM nothing but the head resident in 
the home in which my ancestors 
happen to be hving at the present 
time. I sometimes stroll into my soul to 
visit them. In the center I find a noble 
band drawn up ready for the day's 
work. I should like to describe them to 
you, but while they are interesting to 
me, I find there is no subject such a 
bore to any one else. I cannot help, 
however, pointing out to you the old 
crusader in his armor, the Puritan 
martyr, the Pilgrim adventurer, and 
the solid phalanx of noble knights and 
squires, honest yeomen and laborers. 
There they stand, and their eyes flash 
back at me as though to say: ''Here 
198 



A TRIP AROUND MY SOUL 

we are, Master! Command us whither 
you will!" 

Looking at them I see in them all the 
reason for myself. Hair, eyes, brow, 
figure, I can trace in them the history 
of myself from the beginning, and as I 
stand there I understand that I am not 
an individual so much as a battahon. 

These stand in the central campus of 
my soul. But soon my eyes begin to 
roam around the darker corners. I see 
there more ancestors who have not 
fallen into line. Lurking in the shadows 
around the edges I begin to discern 
them all. The lazy ones leaning up 
against the walls looking idly on; the 
lustful ones with horrid leer and bestial 
eyes; the snobbish ones with upturned 
noses in a group apart; I see to my as- 
tonishment the savage with paint and 
hatred on his face; and far away in the 

199 



A TRIP AROUND MY SOUL 

shadows at the back I seem to see one 
hanging by his tail to the trees of the 
forest. 

Then my work begins. I pass round 
the dark corners of my soul and bring 
these recreants forth and whip them 
into line. The lazy ones I haul forth 
by the back of the neck, squeaUng and 
whining, and I have been even known 
to go so far as Saint Paul and kick 
them into their places in the line. The 
lustful ones I set to the hardest and 
most strenuous task and lynxlike 
watch them at it. The snobs I stand 
and jeer and laugh at till for very 
shame they have to join the ranks. The 
savage I fight and conquer, though 
often blood is drawn before the victory 
is mine. 

At last with every ancestor at my 
back I give the order. Forward, march! 

200 



A TRIP AROUND MY SOUL 

and we start off together for the day's 
work, every man in the ranks and 
the very monkey behind dragging a 
load. 



LIFE 'S A JEST 

STRANGE as it may seem, it was 
an old Scotch elder who said, *'The 
want of a sense of humor is the unpar- 
donable sin." It is true that its absence 
is almost a sin, for a man's attitude 
toward life is not wholesome if he be 
without it. And the humorless state is 
so hopeless as to be almost unpardon- 
able, the proverbial surgical operation 
for the purpose of introducing a joke 
into a hard head not yet having been 
invented. It is an unpardonable sin, for 
life in some of its aspects is a jest, and 
the only righteous and rational atti- 
tude of human beings toward life in 
many of its manifestations is deep, 
hearty laughter. The sense of humor at 
its best is one of the deepest things in 

202 



life's a jest 



life. It is a spiritual perception of the 
vast, incongruous discrepancy which 
exists between things as they seem and 
things as they really are. It is not, then, 
as is so generally supposed, one of the 
superficial elements of life. It is part 
of all that is healthiest and noblest in 
humanity. 

The plan of life and the infinitely 
subtle adjustments of nature teach us 
of the intellectual power of the divine 
mind; we can infer from the beauty of 
the world that God loves beautiful 
things; so from the humorous vein 
which runs through real life we must 
read back to a deep sense of humor in 
the divine mind. "He that sitteth in 
the heavens shall laugh." There is a 
spark of omniscience in all real laugh- 
ter. Most of our humorous apprecia- 
tion springs from our delighted com- 

203 



life's a jest 



parison between the two sides of a 
thing, the apparent and the inner. We 
are dehghted that we have got the 
inside view, and the thought of the 
deceptive appearance of the outside 
makes us chuckle with an omniscient 
feeling of superiority. A truly omnis- 
cient view of the world, the absolute 
comparison between its outer appear- 
ance and its inner reality, cannot fail 
to be a tender and sympathetic view 
and yet also deeply humorous. The 
career, for instance, of a seemingly suc- 
cessful rogue must be very humorous 
when viewed in its completeness by the 
omniscient eye, as it is seen clearly 
how, in spite of all his self-confidence, 
his tricks and subterfuges, he is inevit- 
ably working out, step by step, his own 
disclosure and ruin. Sin is not only sad, 
it is ridiculous when seen by wisdom 
204 



LIFE S A JEST 

in its true light. There is subject for 
laughter as well as for tears in the 
complete view of the life of any man of 
whom it cannot be said, "Whatever 
record leap to light, he never will be 
shamed!" There is eternal irony in the 
fruitless attempt to estabUsh a king- 
dom of darkness in God's world of 
light. 

This is true in Shakespeare's view of 
life, for his mind partakes more of om- 
niscience in his knowledge of human 
character than that of any other of 
modern times. With Shakespeare we 
can laugh at the worst rogues, and feel 
that we do right to laugh, because he 
makes us laugh not merely at their wit, 
but oftentimes at the essential ridicu- 
lousness of sin in itself. He makes us do 
this with full sympathy for all that 
is left wholesome in the sinner, such 

205 



life's a jest 



as his lively fancy and inventiveness. 
Yet under all that, our chief delight 
springs from our appreciation of the 
comic irony in the contrast between 
the serious, sinful intention of the ras- 
cal and the way in which he is actually 
ultimately defeating his own end. 

Unfortunately Christ's reporters had 
not much of this virtue, and have trans- 
mitted to us merely stray glimpses of 
the humor of their Master. Traces 
of a gentle irony, however, run all 
through the Gospel narratives, often 
hardly appreciated by the writer or the 
reader. ''Beautifully" (fcaXws), Christ 
says in Mark 7: 9, "do ye reject the 
commandment of God, that ye may 
keep your tradition." And there is 
quiet humor in the way in which the 
phrase ''with persecutions" is inserted 
at the end of the Ust of the "houses, 
206 



life's a jest 



and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, 
and children, and lands," which those 
who followed him would receive now 
in this time. 

That a genuine humorous apprecia- 
tion of the intrinsic ridiculousness of 
the sin does not necessarily detract 
from one's moral detestation of it is 
shown in the humorous description 
Jesus gives of the manner in which the 
"hypocrites" go forth to do an act of 
charity, *' sounding a trumpet before 
them in the synagogues and in the 
streets." ''Verily I say unto you," adds 
Jesus three times as he thinks of their 
easy success in gaining the publicity 
they desired — "Verily I say unto you, 
They have their reward." Such gleams 
of the humor of Jesus have half-uncon- 
sciously strayed into the narratives of 
his serious-minded reporters. We are 
207 



LIFE S A JEST 

glad even of these faint hints of what 
the Master's humor must have been, 
because to-day this sense seems to us an 
indispensable quality in every broad, 
lovable character. 

Such humorous appreciation as that 
we have been speaking of springs from 
sublime faith in God, from the abso- 
lute assurance that in spite of adverse 
appearances God's great, good plan is 
being surely worked out to its final con- 
summation everywhere. Faith, hope, 
love, and the sense of humor, no one 
of these can be present in its full- 
ness perhaps without the other, but all 
are necessary to one who is seriously 
struggling to help this sinful, suffering 
world. There is a humorous side to ig- 
norance, jealousy, thanklessness, and 
immaturity, and these are the chief 
causes of worry with those who are 
208 



LIFE S A JEST 

sincerely trying to work for the good of 
society. Blessed is the man who can 
bear the sin of the world upon his heart 
till he has done his best to heal it, and 
then, when it threatens to load him 
down with useless worry, is able to 
side-track it all on to the lines of hu- 
mor, and laugh with all his soul at the 
hypocrites with their trumpets and the 
Pharisee with his preposterous prayer. 

The great moral issues of the life 
outside of us have, then, their essential 
humor, their comic irony, the thought 
of which is ever a relief in times of de- 
pression to bring us back from des- 
perate, fanatic earnestness to human 
sanity again, and to the remembrance 
of the great, good, abiding, changeless 
facts of life. 

But our own lives are even more fer- 
tile in himior for us than is the life of 

209 



LIFE S A JEST 

the world. The absence of a sense of 
humor is ahnost always accompanied 
by seK-conceit, because the poor man 
defective in this respect accepts him- 
seK among the serious facts of life. All 
incidents which have happened to him 
have become thereby events of general 
interest. 

But as long as you can genuinely 
laugh at yourself, at your ridiculous 
pretensions to be somebody and know 
something, at the terrible disparity be- 
tween your friends' opinion of your 
powers and your own more intimate 
knowledge of your own slipshod, faulty 
work — as long as you can sincerely 
recognize at times with laughter your 
own insignificance in the universe, as 
long as you refuse to take yourseK en- 
tirely seriously, so long is your soul not 
lost. Stevenson could heartily laugh at 
210. 



LIFE S A JEST 

himself; Thackeray could wonder why, 
as he said, people did not discover what 
an old fraud he really was. Even Sir 
Andrew Aguecheek, in Shakespeare's 
"Twelfth Night," is not hopeless, be- 
cause, as Dowden says, ''through his 
soft veil of silliness and imbecility glim- 
mers for a moment the faint suspicion 
that he is an ass." 

So far we have considered two great 
sources of the refreshing stream of the 
humor of life — first, in the faith that 
while the world is not finished (hence 
the incongruity), yet it seems to be 
coming all right (hence the possibility 
of laughter); second, in the vast dis- 
similarity between the ideal which we 
know in our mind constitutes good 
work and our own laborious and much 
vaunted achievement. But a great por- 
tion of the genuine humor of the world 
211 



LIFE S A JEST 

arises from a third source — from a 
recognition of those great spheres of 
life which are neither moral nor im- 
moral, but simply non-moral. 

We have seen that the sense of hu- 
mor saves us from fanaticism and ego- 
ism; from this third point of view it is 
an emotional antiseptic and delivers us 
from all eager and shrill intensity. We 
are saved thereby from the slush of 
sentimentalism. There are facts in life 
which ought not to be made the text 
for a sermon, but rather the subject for 
a joke. The aesthetic bride and bride- 
groom of Du Manner's picture in 
"Punch" are discussing their newly 
acquired six-mark teapot with intense 
expressions of artistic fervor — it is 
"divine" and "consummate." At last 
the bride, carried away by her enthu- 
siasm, says, "0 Algernon, let us live 
212 



life's a jest 



up to it!" A sense of humor saves us 
from praying that we may hve up to 
teapots and from everlasting preach- 
ing. Humor from this point of view is 
the mark of the man who is relating 
things to another and so doing a little 
thinking. Wit brings into relation the 
superficial incongruities of things in a 
manner to excite our delighted sur- 
prise. The pun, for instance, relates 
words to one another in unexpected, 
incongruous ways. Humor finds in the 
deeper things of life the same unex- 
pected likenesses and unlikenesses, the 
same dissimilarity between appearance 
and reality, the same oddities and 
vagabond relations, as wit finds in mere 
words and intellectual technique. Har- 
mony in the relations of thought ex- 
cites our admiration, difficulty in re- 
lating facts to one another excites 

i213 



LIFE S A JEST 

mental effort and logical thought. But 
every now and again we come upon a 
relation in the world of thought which 
does not excite us to admiration by its 
harmony, or jar upon us and stimulate 
us by its difficulty and mystery, but 
which makes us laugh by its very de- 
fiance of all laws and "gives us a sud- 
den glory for a moment, a holiday from 
the schoolroom of exact thought and 
serious effort." 

Humor in modern times is penetrat- 
ing deeper and deeper into life. The 
mere pun is despised. Humor is be- 
coming more and more thoughtful. 
By this is meant that thought had 
penetrated deeply into the mysteries of 
life before the humorous relation of 
things to each other was discovered. 
Humor presupposes certain trains of 
thought, and these presuppositions are 
214 



LIFE S A JEST 

often best conveyed to the popular 
mind through their gratuitous jangling 
in humor rather than in their harmoni- 
ous logical sequence. Many of the most 
noxious errors have been laughed out 
of court. The recognition of this great 
holiday world of humor is an essential 
in the happy and useful life to-day. It 
is often the third way of escape in 
life's most unpleasant dilemmas. It 
saves one from the necessity of telling 
many a lie and committing many a 
discourtesy. Escape to this world of 
humor when busybodies come asking 
you questions they have no business to 
ask; when the insincere, thoughtless 
questioner tries to disprove the noble 
faith of life. When the world has grown 
dark for you and you are lonely, do not 
enter upon long evenings of auto-sug- 
gestive worrying about things in gen- 
215 



LIFE S A JEST 

eral, but take down your Don Quixote 
and read how "Don Quixote could not 
help smiling at the simplicity of San- 
cho." It is the mark of breadth of 
mind, of the mind that tries to see 
things in all their relations. It is the 
great humanizer, it is absolutely demo- 
cratic, it can laugh at everything ex- 
cept the ultimate harmonies of life 
which excite worship and admiration. 
It is the mark of the idealist who fears 
no comparisons even the most incon- 
gruous, because he is so sure that the 
ultimate reality is noble and right. It 
shows us the funny side of the worst 
misfortune. Stevenson with a smile 
could call the disease which he knew 
was killing him, "Bloody Jack." It 
permits a continual innocent escape 
from restraint and convention. And 
yet, like all valuable possessions, it is 

216 



LIFE S A JEST 

most dangerous. It is much easier to be 
a righteous man without it than with 
it. It is only safe in the hfe of one who 
loves the great harmonies of existence, 
honor and kindness and morality and 
justice, a thousand times more than he 
does all the "quips and cranks and 
wanton wiles" of humor. Yet to suc- 
ceed in life one must know what things 
are not to be taken seriously, and to 
the man in tune with the universe 
there is always a point of view from 
which "Life's a Jest." 



LAPSES FROM THE PROSAIC 

SUNDAY WEATHER 

DINNA gang to kirk 
When it rains. 
Ye micht catch 
Rheumatic pains! 

Bide t'hame 

When it's cauld, 
Lest ye dee 

When ye 're auld! 

The kirk's nae place 

When it's hot, 
The folks micht think 

Ye cared a lot! 

When it's fine 

Leave the Lord, 
Gang a-ridin' 

Inyer Ford! 
218 



LAPSES FROM THE PROSAIC 

Ye like kirk fine 

Believe in God, 
But canna gae, 

The weather's odd! 

Ye 're no to blame. 
It's in ither hands, 

Ye bet the Lord 
Understands! 

A SCOTCH BLESSING 

"If after kirk you bide a wee. 
There's some wad hke to speak to ye. 
If after kirk you rise and flee, 
We'll all seem cold and stiff to ye. 
The one that's in the seat wi' ye 
Is stranger here than you, maybe; 
All here hae got their fears and cares; 
Add you your soul unto our prayers; 
Be you our angel unawares." 

219 



LAPSES FROM THE PROSAIC 
THE REAL HERO 

Oh, it's great to be a hero, to lift your 

hat and bow, 
To write your reminiscences and tell 

the people how! 
But it's hard to take the off-side on the 

questions of your day, 
If you want to be a hero — there is no 

other way. 

Oh, it's great to be a hero and to hear 

the people shout. 
And to know your statue '11 stand in 

the market-place without! 
But to raise eternal marble from the 

world's despised clay 
Takes the toil of the creator, means 

the cross upon the way. 

Oh, it's great to be a hero, in some 
other far-off year, 
220 



LAPSES FROM THE PROSAIC 

When you know how things have come 

out and can hear the people 

cheer! 
But how blank the dearest faces, how 

the wise ones looked away 
When trembling lips first stammered 

what is common truth to-day. 

love's secret 
A SIMPLE word of sooth is this; 
Love liveth still in giving bliss. 
Who for himself bUss doth demand 
He killeth love right out of hand. 
Love loveth joy in other eyes; 
Joy can be found no otherwise. 



THE SECRET OF THE MORAL 
TRAINING OF CHILDREN 

PROBABLY the only way you can 
do people any real good is to 
get their great-grandparents into the 
primary department of your Sunday- 
School. Morals and Californian red- 
wood forests and languages and htur- 
gies all exist in that world where a 
thousand years is as one day. 

In the School of the Universe the 
pupils are races, not individuals. With 
all our faults and virtues, we parents 
are just the last edition but one of 
our ancestors. These later editions dif- 
fer essentially from the previous ones 
probably only in a couple of new sec- 
tions, or a few verbal emendations in 
the family grammar. They include for 

222 



THE MORAL TRAINING OF CHILDREN 

good or evil the net result of every edi- 
tion since the first. It is not, indeed, so 
much the naughtiness of our ancestors 
as their goodness that enrages me. 
I can forgive them the naughty streak 
we all have in us, but I can hardly for- 
give them for the way they taught 
their children to be good. My greatest 
objection to the parents of the past is 
that so many of them allowed them- 
selves to believe that their own com- 
fort and their children's morality were 
one and the same thing. If the adults 
in any home enjoyed comfortable 
peace, that showed that the children 
in that home were good. The world ex- 
ists for adults, they thought. Children 
are interlopers at the best; goodness 
for them consists largely in the recog- 
nition of this fact. Morahty for chil- 
dren consists in silence before their eld- 
223 



THE MORAL TRAINING OF CHILDREN 

ers and in unquestioning obedience to 
adult commands. Canon Ainger when 
a small boy preached his first sermon 
to children. He summed up in it this 
view of morality which was learned so 
well by every child, when he took for 
his text the words from some unfamil- 
iar passage of Holy Writ, "Do sit still 
and keep quiet!" 

That such an absolute misunder- 
standing of the golden age of life 
should be possible seems to us almost 
incredible. We have ceased patronizing 
children. It is the age of the child: your 
solemn stupid grown-up is the only 
true interloper. A sense of humor has 
returned to us, and we adults all recog- 
nize now with laughter that children 
have far more of the essential things of 
life to teach us than we have to teach 
them. 

224 



THE MORAL TRAINING OF CHILDREN 

How the angels must have blas- 
phemed over the morally improving 
lesson books of the past! Here is *'The 
Children's Friend" for 1787, which 
tells us of Robin, aged six, whose activ- 
ity had in some way made his parents 
feel uncomfortable, so that his father 
said of him: "His principles are quite 
corrupt; every one will hate him ut- 
terly, and not a soul assist him in his 
need. He will commit some wicked 
action, and be punished for it by his 
country. God grant I may be dead be- 
fore this comes to pass!" Janeway, an- 
other moral instructor of the same age, 
suggests to parents, "Put your chil- 
dren upon learning their catechism 
and the Scriptures and getting to pray 
and weep by themselves." Janeway 
also adds, by way of encouragement in 
this course, "Your child is never too 

225 



THE MORAL TRAINING OF CHILDREN 

little to go to hell." The mother of 
the Wesleys was perhaps the champion 
moral trainer of children in this re- 
spect. She felt it was their duty to 
leave their elders in peace, and so she 
tells us that her children "were taught 
when turned a year old (and some be- 
fore) to fear the rod and cry softly." 
She does not add, however, that a ma- 
jority of her nineteen children were 
wicked enough to thwart that stern 
discipline by succumbing to it in their 
early years. Only six survived it. But in 
spite of this erroneous idea that the 
comfort of the parents is the meas- 
ure of the morality of the children, it 
is interesting to find that practically 
every biography of every great human 
being which comes to light begins with 
the tale of worried and bewildered par- 
ents. We must all sympathize with 
226 



THE MORAL TRAINING OF CHILDREN 

Mark Twain's pious mother, whose son 
Samuel, as she said, "gave her more 
trouble than all the other children put 
together," when she found that her 
son's highest feelings about the sanc- 
tuary were that "church ain't worth 
shucks, but it's better than goin' to 
school." 

Mistral's poor mother had to fish 
him out three times in one day from 
the same pond where the lilies grew, 
and clothe him each time in a clean 
suit of clothes and make him promise 
each time not to go near the lilies 
again. At the opening of the biography 
of practically every great soul there is 
the self-same picture of the anxious, 
tear-stained faces of the parents full of 
reproach and suffering, as the mother 
says to her strangely acting child: 
"Son, why hast thou thus dealt with 

227 



THE MORAL TRAINING OF CHILDREN 

US? Behold thy father and I have sought 
thee sorrowing." 

But if we dismiss this idea that the 
moral training of children consists in 
the enforcement of rules for making 
their elders comfortable, what is the 
true principle for the moral education 
of children to-day? 

It is a hard one. It does not tend to 
comfortable afternoon naps and seri- 
ous grown-up talks at meal-times. It is 
that you should love your children. I 
admit, it is hard to do. I often pity a 
mother as I see her with her first baby 
girl. How hard it is going to be for her 
to get to like that child. Oh, the tootsy- 
wootsy stage is mostly cuddly and 
physical and easy. But when it comes 
to V enfant terrible stage, to the gawky, 
self-sufTicient, cruel, slangy, high-school 
stage, to the silly, sentimental, secre- 
228 



THE MORAL TRAINING OF CHILDREN 

live stage, is she really going to be able 
to like that girl, to love her? For the 
only way races can be trained mor- 
ally is by love between individuals. 
The problem for us parents is how to 
keep friends with our children. The 
highest compliment I ever saw paid by 
a son to his father was paid a little 
while ago at a wedding, where a son 
chose his own father as best man, say- 
ing that he knew no one else with 
whom he was more chummy and for 
whom he felt more of the spirit of 
comradeship. 

The greatest problem in the moral 
education of children to-day is the self- 
ishness of parents. They do not like 
their children enough to be friends 
with them. They shirk the anxiety and 
responsibility of loving. Men want to 
play golf with other Olympians on 
229 



THE MORAL TRAINING OF CHILDREN 

Saturday afternoons instead of playing 
Indians with George and Harry. Wo- 
men want to read the last best seller 
to themselves instead of reading Peter 
Rabbit to the httle toddler, who is sent 
back to the nursery to play with the 
everlasting blocks. 

A plaything is something you can 
take up and throw down as it suits 
your caprice and humor; you take good 
care of it because of the pride and joy 
you have in it and the pleasure it gives 
you; and children do make such bright, 
sweet, pretty, living dollies! 

But a real friend is one who can 
never make too many demands upon 
your time or patience. You are the life 
of your friend's life. You influence him 
by taking into your mind his ideas, by 
trying to understand them and in so 
doing modifying them. He then takes 
230 



THE MORAL TRAINING OF CHILDREN 

your modifications back again into his 
world and views them from his point 
of view, so modifying them again, and 
so on ad infinitum. And the process is 
love, and the product is truth. 

The greatest stroke of luck that 
could ever fall upon any ordinary, 
stock, shop-soiled adult would be to 
be really the confidant and friend of a 
little two or three year old boy or girl. 
To be able to be this is the consumma- 
tion of all literature and all art and all 
knowledge. 

Better than all mere pictures or 
poetry or music is this glimpse into 
the primeval, into the race-conscious- 
ness, into the heart of the budding 
flower, which is the very source of all 
the beauty and glory of the world. 

You will understand, then, that the 
reason that your httle boy kicked the 

231 



THE MORAL TRAINING OF CHILDREN 

hole in the lawn was not that he was 
a "spiteful little brute," but that when 
he did it he "was a horse," and you will 
modify this idea of his with one of your 
own as to the unsuitabihty of the lawn 
as a place for hitching horses. 

You will not recognize the straight 
honest lie your little girl tells you, 
looking you full in the face, as a proof 
that "no child is too young to go to 
hell," but you will try to enter into the 
poetical logic of her reading of the situ- 
ation, and wonder, when all is said, 
whether she was not nearer the truth 
than you were. 

Ah, the only real problem in the 
whole situation is this: How can we 
grown-ups keep our membership in 
both organizations, that of "The Toil- 
ers," and that of "The Children"? 
How can we be efficient servants of our 

232 



THE MORAL TRAINING OF CHILDREN 

own day and also friends of the new 
day, capable of being both J. Jones, 
Esq., and '*a big black bear"? Prob- 
ably your occasional identity with the 
latter terrifying delight of childhood 
will be the only fact about you that 
will get you into heaven. 

Don't be solemn. Don't be staid and 
conventional. Get off your pedestal. 
Fool a little. Love much. You will 
not succeed very well. But down the 
page of history, sometime, somewhere, 
there will appear a great race whose 
success, little as they will acknowledge 
it, will be due to the fact that they 
are your great-grandchildren. 

THE END 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



LIBRAHY Uh uuNLiMCsa 

018 407 24a 9 



